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Trumbull officials prepared to move forward with revised $12.5 million water project
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The Trumbull County commissioners are planning to move forward with a waterline project to serve Braceville Township, Southington and West Farmington, but it will not include other potential customers who were surveyed last month to determine their interest.
Gary Newbrough, project planning director for the sanitary engineer’s office, said the responses received from 2,100 potential water customers showed little interest from people along Nelson Mosier, Eagle Creek and Parkman roads in Warren and Braceville townships and Shanks-Phalanx Road in Braceville Township.
Those people were added to the project’s possible scope a month ago, when letters were mailed to potential customers, asking them if they would have an interest in getting a waterline.
It was an area about double the size of the original plan, dubbed the Blueprint For Prosperity, that was unveiled in November.
The county is moving forward with a project of about $12.5 million that will serve about 900 customers.
The area to be served looks a lot like the $15 million proposal, except it no longer includes a redundant line traveling along U.S. Route 422 to provide Warren water as a backup source.
When county officials announced the project in November, they said it was being proposed at the urging of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency as a way to get water to West Farmington because of problems the village was having with its water system.
To help the county get water to West Farmington, the state offered a zero percent 30-year loan with 50 percent loan forgiveness of the principal to greatly reduce the cost.
The commissioners approved a resolution authorizing an application to the Ohio Water Supply Revolving Loan Account to officially ask for the funding.
The current proposal is to pipe Newton Falls water north along Braceville-Robinson Road and state Route 534 into Southington and then to West Farmington.
On Feb. 1, Champion trustees wrote a letter to the county commissioners, advocating a different route for the waterline, suggesting that it follow State Road in Champion to Southington, as recommended in a study by MS Consultants of Youngstown in the mid- to late 1990s.
The study was written to determine the best way to extend water to Southington Township.
Randy Smith, county and sanitary engineer, said he will formally respond to the Champion letter soon, but said the Braceville-Robinson route is better than State Road because it eliminates a problem at Braceville-Robinson involving water intentionally flushed into the ditch.