V&M Star still intends to be Girard’s sewage customer, lawyer assures

V&M Star still intends to be Girard’s sewage customer, lawyer assures

Girard

V&M Star’s attorney denied at Monday’s city council meeting that the steel company was interested in convincing Girard to transfer sewage jurisdiction from Girard to Youngstown.

Girard, a city which in January petitioned the state to end a more than 10-year fiscal emergency, is pegged to make up to $180,000 a year in treatment fees from pipe-maker V&M Star.

“There is not a story,” said Kim Stefanski, the company’s attorney, at the meeting’s opening. “We are coming to Girard as planned. I don’t think there’s an issue.”

Instead, he said the only discussion involving sewage was the building of an emergency extension, or pipeline, to Youngstown’s waste water treatment plant in case Girard’s plant failed.

The waste water that comes from V&M Star to Girard is initially treated at V&M’s own plant.

Dennis Meek, a waste water engineer for Girard, said the city receives on average 2.5 million gallons of waste water from V&M each day. It has a capacity for 5 million gallons a day.

He said there have been discussions between both cities and the company on building the emergency extension. All parties are looking to amend the operating agreement in order to do so. During an emergency, Girard would control diverting the waste water to Youngstown, Meek said.