Shippenville Borough Council president Mike Cotherman has said the borough would be willing to pay $1 million to upgrade Paint-Elk’s sewage treatment plant to handle the extra capacity needed to accept Shippenville’s sewage.

Shippenville’s other option would be to build a new sewer plant, which could cost $3 million or more.

Travis Long, project environmental scientist with Gwin, Dobson and Foreman, the borough’s engineering firm, represented Shippenville at the authority meeting and said the borough is still very much interested in making the connection, and that Cotherman wanted to know what the next steps would be.

The authority is concerned about the borough’s I & I problem – where stormwater enters the sanitary sewer system and overloads the treatment plant – a problem shared by many older sewer systems across the region and state.

Long said the borough has greatly reduced the I & I problem through aggressive repairs and maintenance, and has now reduced the storm water in the system to an average of about 2,000 gallons a day out of a total of 23,000 gallons a day of total flow into the sewage treatment plant.

“It’s a pretty tight system,” Long said. The borough will continue looking for leaks and stormwater flows into the system as part of its on-going maintenance plan.

“It’s in their best interest to keep the system as tight as possible,” Long said.

Authority president Hunter McMeans said he was concerned about large I & I flows from Shippenville overloading the authority’s treatment lagoons, and wanted assurances the borough would deal with it.

Shippenville would pay a per-gallon rate for treatment service, and large stormwater flows would be very expensive for the borough. McMeans said he understood that, but also noted that a very large flow could be catastrophic and place the authority in violation of environmental regulations.

Authority engineer Brian Sekula said the authority could ask for other provisions in the agreement to discourage stormwater problems from the borough, including a cap on flows that, once exceeded, would require Shippenville to shut off sewer taps or increase the per-gallon service fee on the borough.

Sekula said the authority has the power to ban new sewer taps in any part of its system, including Shippenville should it connect.

McMeans moved to direct the EADS Group to draft an agreement template, leaving key provisions blank or optional for completion through negotiation, and have the authority’s and the borough’s engineers and legal council review the document. The motion passed unanimously.

Maple Drive plan

The authority voted to move forward on a much smaller connection proposal, this one from residents of the Maple Drive area just east of Shippenville.

Dave Woolslayer attended the June authority meeting and said he and some neighbors would be willing to install a sewer line to connect to the authority’s system as a solution to on-lot sewage problems in that area.

Elk Township supervisor Keith Etzel said in June the township would be willing to provide some of the materials for such a project.

The authority is interested in the idea but wanted to make sure the line would handle the flows if Shippenville connects to the system.

A sewer line exists near the Maple Drive area and Sekula said it was determined to be a six-inch line and would have to be replaced by an eight-inch line to handle the flow from Shippenville.

Means said it would be best if the authority owned the line once installed. He suggested the Maple Drive neighbors could sell it to the authority for a dollar.

The authority board voted to contact the Maple Drive neighbors, inform them of what is needed and ask them to present a plan to the authority.