Sunbury Consulting Engineer Wes Hall of CT Consultants asked council members to begin thinking about items to place on a 2018 Ohio Public Works Commission Grant Request.
He said during a recent Sunbury Village Council meeting that OPWC grant requests are submitted during the first week in October of the year prior to the work being done.
“A lot of sewer programs get funded,” Hall said. “You have older sewers on the north side of the village, and the Inflow and Infiltration on Cheshire Road is using capacity of that sewer line, limiting development in that area.”
Hall said to get maximum points grant applications should show a 26 percent local share and a no-interest OPWC Loan request.
Hall also noted that the Cherry Street storm sewer project, partially funded by a 2017 OPWC Grant, is moving forward. In March, council members approved an $183,235 contract with Law General Contracting out of St. Louisville, Ohio, to complete the storm water sewer upgrades along West Cherry Street from Columbus Street to Evening Street, and from Cherry Street south along Columbus Street to mid-block.
The Cherry Street storm sewer line project has been broken out of the plans for the 5 Columbus Street parking lot project. Breaking that part of the project out allows the sewer line to be installed before the Ohio Department of Transportation repaves State Route 37 through the village later this year.
During the phase of the project when the street is being excavated and sewer lines installed, heavy trucks will be rerouted along Route 605. During most of the project one lane of Cherry Street from Columbus Street to Evening Street will remain open, but to avoid delays most cars could use Granville Street to move around construction.
When the new storm sewer is functional, it will divert water from an older storm sewer that travels from behind the businesses along Vernon Street, and abandon an older storm sewer west of Columbus Street that is failing.
“We had our construction meeting with Law Contracting last week,” Hall said. “It will take three to four weeks for the project to ramp up, then four weeks for the project.”
Sunbury Mayor Tommy Hatfield said council members should keep a November Village Charter issue on the front burner if a charter is to appear on the November ballot.
“If we want to be on the November ballot, we need 15 people to be on a charter commission,” Hatfield said. “We’ll have more about that in our summer newsletter. We need to have a couple of open houses, and make certain charter commission candidates have ballot petitions.”
Hatfield said that many Ohio villages have moved to a charter form of government and there was no reason to reinvent the proverbial wheel; that the results of other community’s charters could be used as a template for Sunbury’s effort.
During the evenings earlier Services Committee meeting, Sunbury Wastewater Treatment Plant Supervisor Dale Wampler said there is an underground water leak in a two-inch service line at the plant. Wampler said the leak’s exact location is unknown, which could be costly to repair.
“We’ve narrowed the leak down to somewhere within 250 feet,” Wampler said. “We met with Zimmerman (an excavation contractor who has provided services to the village in the past) and the line is nine to 10 feet deep. The best solution would be to put in a new line at 48 inches deep rather than dig down 10 feet over 250 feet looking for a leak.”
Wampler said he is getting repair estimates and would likely bring those estimates to the April 19 council meeting. Wampler also said the plant’s daily flow for February was 574,000 gallons per day. The plant has an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency permit to treat up to 1.125 million gallons per day.
