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Youngstown panel considers nearly $4 million for sewer plant improvements
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
The city’s board of control this morning is expected to approve initial contracts for the first phase of the long-term $147 million sewer-overflow control plan.
“These are two major projects that lead up to $37 million in improvements at the wastewater treatment plant itself,” Mayor John A. McNally said Wednesday. “This is necessary work, and it really is going to lay the groundwork for the improvements at the wastewater treatment plant that hasn’t been improved since it was first built 40 or 50 years ago.”
The first proposed contract, for up to $1.16 million, is with MS Consultants Inc. for a professional-services agreement. The Youngstown company will provide engineering services for electrical upgrades at the treatment plant.
A separate contract for up to $2.8 million with ARCADIS of Akron is for secondary-treatment improvements at the plant.
Construction on this phase will begin in late 2016, said Charles Shasho, deputy director of public works. Plant improvements must be complete by 2018, according to the agreement with the state and federal environmental agencies.
The upgrades for which MS Consultants will provide engineering services will improve the electrical equipment at the Gibson Street plant, including pumps and automated controls.
The secondary-treatment improvement plans by the Akron company will add aeration to the treatment process.
“The contract covers everything from design to construction oversight,” Shasho said.
Actual construction of both the electrical and treatment improvement projects, however, will be handled in contracts to come.
Treatment-plant improvements, estimated at $37 million, are part of an agreement finalized in December 2014 between the city and the U.S. and Ohio environmental protection agencies to reduce combined sewer overflows.
After the plant improvements, the next phase of the sewer-overflow control project includes installation of a $62 million wet-weather treatment facility adjacent to that plant, to more than double the city’s wastewater treatment capacity, and a $48 million sewer-interceptor installation to curtail 18 combined storm and sanitary sewer overflows into Mill Creek MetroParks.
There are 101 combined storm and sanitary overflows in the city.
The agreement allows the city until 2033 to complete the entire project.
The project drew renewed public attention last summer when the park closed its three lakes – Newport, Cohasset and Glacier – after sewer inflow caused by heavy rains in June killed fish in Lake Newport.
Shasho said the secondary-treatment improvements will eliminate the location of the city’s largest combined sewer overflow into the Mahoning River off Federal Street.