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Sewer upgrade would take at least 7 years, mayor says
Mayor McNally - Best Case Scenario
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Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally says even if the funds were immediately available to correct the city sewer systems, the entire project would still take 7 years to complete.
and David Skolnick
YOUNGSTOWN
Even if the city were to get a grant for the full $146 million cost of upgrading its sewer system, including eliminating combined storm and sanitary-sewer discharges into Mill Creek and other waterways, the project would take at least seven years to complete, according to Mayor John A. McNally.
“In terms of the park, it will be a tremendous mess” during construction, he said, referring to Mill Creek Park. “We’ve tried to minimize what could be some damage to the park through construction efforts,” he said. “There’s no easy solution,” he added.
Under an agreement between the city and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, the work is to be completed by 2033, and the mayor said the city would follow that schedule because of the need to finance the project over the long-term and keep it affordable for sanitary-sewer system users.
If the city were to receive no grants or loans for the project, and the sewer users had to pay the entire cost, that cost likely could be paid by continued sewer rate increases after 2018 at the current rate of about 4 percent annually to complete the project in 2033, the mayor said.
City officials have looked at obtaining state and federal money, but there aren’t a lot of options, McNally said.
“We frequently are able to get assistance from federal and state programs,” typically in $1 million or $2 million increments. “We can get low-interest loans,” at between 1 percent and 1.8 percent interest, he said.
Senate Minority Leader Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd, spoke with an official in Gov. John Kasich’s office as well as with Craig W. Butler, OEPA director, about funding and finding a way to get this work done ahead of its existing schedule that has the work start in July 2020 and finish in December 2033.
The city can seek money from the Ohio Public Works Commission, and could possibly obtain funds from the state’s capital budget next year, said Schiavoni, who acknowledged there isn’t enough money to resolve the issue.
Eliminating sewage discharges has become the center of local attention since one of those discharges during a heavy rain caused a massive fish kill in Lake Newport last month, followed by Friday’s indefinite closure of lakes Newport, Cohasset and Glacier due to high E. coli sewage bacteria levels in Lake Newport.
Nine inches of rain fell in June, compared with the normal 5 inches for the month.
Schiavoni said the problem is all over the state.
“Butler said the E. coli levels aren’t unique to Mill Creek,” he said. “The Cuyahoga River is a much greater problem. That doesn’t make me or others feel better, but it’s a large issue throughout the state.”
He said he’s looking at trying to pass legislation to create a fund for communities with these problems to address them.
“It could be bonds, grants and loans,” he said. “Unless we get that big influx of money, it’s going to be difficult to resolve the problems in all of the old infrastructure.”
Also today, officials with the park, the city board of health, the Mahoning County Board of Health and the OEPA will meet to discuss “what options may be available to address the problems in the near term,” said Dina Pierce, an OEPA spokeswoman.
Tara Cioffi, environmental health/air pollution director for the city’s health department who will be at the meeting, said the meeting is designed to see “how we’re going to proceed with sampling, who will do the sampling and what the park can do to ensure the waters are safe moving forward.”
She also said that this is a statewide problem.
“It’s nothing new,” Cioffi said. “The Ohio EPA has kind of come forward and said that it’s not the greatest concern for them. They’re not going to be doing more sampling.”
“City hall always seeks out miracles, while, unfortunately, not realizing that they were part of the original problem,” said Harry Meshel of Youngstown, former Ohio Senate president and former Mill Creek MetroParks commissioner.
The city failed to properly maintain and upgrade its sewer system, despite imposing large water and sewer rate increases, he said. Since the Mahoning County and Youngstown city sewer systems are interconnected, the mayor was asked during Wednesday’s Louie Free show on Vindy Talk Radio whether it would be desirable to consolidate the county and city sewer systems to leverage more funds for improvements, as has been done in the Cleveland area.
“I don’t know if that’s the solution to this particular type of problem,” he said.
Mahoning County Commissioner David Ditzler said he favors exploring the feasibility of a joint city and county sewer district.
“I’m not quite sure if the community wants to take on being involved with Youngstown’s sewer system,” the mayor said of those residing outside the city. “There’s never been an outcry for that to happen. There’s never been an outcry for regionalization on this particular issue,” he observed.
“We believe that Mahoning County has some financial commitments that will have to be put in place as part of our long-term control plan as well,” under a long-standing agreement between the city and county, he said, adding that the city law department will be corresponding with the county sanitary engineer’s office on this issue.
With sewer discharge points remaining until the overflows are eliminated, including two that spew a combined yearly average of 23 million gallons into Lake Newport, Atty. Lou Schiavoni, park board chairman, said he favors dredging the park’s lakes Newport and Cohasset,
Although he’s not a scientist, Schiavoni said it seems reasonable to him that increasing the lakes’ capacity through dredging, and thereby making any sewage a smaller portion of their content, might improve water quality in the lakes
Schiavoni, the state senator, said that Butler also mentioned that dredging might be a possibility as long as the dams are removed to provide free-flowing water.
John Pierko, the MS Consultants engineer who wrote a long-term control plan for the city’s sewer overflow system, said Wednesday: “Keep in mind when you try to do a dredging project the permitting costs are just astronomical, just out of sight.”
Sediment has been filling the Lake Newport Wetlands channels since that artificial wetland area was created in 1999; and sedimentation is creating a small island in Lake Cohasset, said Schiavoni, park board chairman.
“When I was young, all those lakes had numerous game fish, including a lot of large-mouth bass, smallmouth bass, and bluegills. There were even perch in Lake Cohasset at one time. As the years went by, and as sedimentation took place, those species stopped coming into the lake,” he said. More recently, carp have predominated, observed Schiavoni, who grew up on Volney Road.
If the lakes were dredged, Schiavoni said the muck dredged from the lake bottoms would likely be dried and placed in a landfill.
“I hope we can come up with the funds to address both” the sewage discharges and the dredging, he said. “They’re both very, very expensive projects,” he added.
After considering a 1990s proposal to dredge Lake Newport for $11 million, the board decided to create the wetlands at the south end of the lake instead.
Chet Cooper, a Youngstown State University biology professor, said there’s no pat answer to whether dredging would improve the water quality.
“One would think, conceptually, having a greater volume of water would lower the concentration of fecal coliforms (bacteria). However, they would still be present, so long as conditions favor their viability and/or reproduction,” Cooper said.
“Does that mean a potential hazard still exists? Maybe. Maybe not. There is always a chance of infection in natural waters, regardless of the presence of [sewage] spillage or not,” he observed.
“The long-term goal for the solution is to eliminate the CSOs [combined sewer overflows]. However, our short-term goal is to protect the public health,” with regard to current park lake conditions, said Ryan Tekac, director of environmental health at the Mahoning County Board of Health.