Fed funds may be coming for sewer project

By: 
Larry Limpf

An appropriations bill recently approved in Congress includes $2.5 million for a project in the Curtice/Williston areas of Ottawa and Lucas counties where sanitary sewers are needed to replace aging septic systems.
Gino Monaco, administrator of the Ottawa County sanitary engineer’s office, said last week the funding would be used to pay for design and engineering work, securing easements for sewer mains, manholes, and pump stations, and completing project documents for advertizing for contract bids.
As of last week, the appropriations bill hadn’t been approved in the senate.
“Lucas County, Ottawa County, Jerusalem and Allen townships have each paid for a share of the general planning work. The next step is to move forward with a design,” Monaco said. “Both counties have been working on securing funding for the next phase.”
A cost estimate for the project conducted before the pandemic came in at just under $20 million.
“When everything is brought up to date I’m sure that is going to go up substantially,” he said. “The question is going to be; is it financially feasible to do the whole project under one contract or are we going to have to split it up into phases?”
Health departments from both counties are completing surveys of septic systems in the area to determine what systems are failing and which are functioning properly.
“They want to establish what the failure rate is in that area and determine whether or not any areas don’t have issues,” Monaco said. “Right now it is assumed that whole service area does need to be sewered but until that survey is done we won’t know for sure.”
Sampling of Crane and Cedar creeks for pollutants has also been conducted as part of the project.

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