Sewer project must go forward
POSTED: June 9, 2008
The most frustrating and potentially expensive project to Jefferson County and a group of residents is dragging on, with no apparent end in sight.
The county was told 18 years ago by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to install sewers in the Crestview-Belvedere and Highland Acres areas near Bloomingdale.
The county commissioners put the project on the back burner for years, instead of assessing residents and going with a much lower construction cost.
The project cost has grown from a couple of million dollars to an estimated $10 million price tag today.
If the commissioners would have implemented the project more than a decade ago, the residents may have been able to afford the cost of the sewers. Now, a segment of the residents are retired and can’t afford the assessment.
At a $10 million cost, the assessments could go as high as $1,600 a year during a 20-year period.
The residents face a hot summer of faulty septic system odors but even that may not be enough to convince them to dish out $1,600 for a sewer system.
The county is banking on a grant and low-interest loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that could make the cost of the sewer system a little more bearable. The county also is attempting to secure a Community Development Block Grant also could help.
The CDBG funding is contingent on proving more than half of the residents are of low and moderate income. A survey is needed with residents stating income, but there isn’t a lot of cooperation in getting the surveys completed.
The county is banking on getting the CDBG funding as a step in getting the federal agriculture grant and loans.
If both grants fall through, the county and the residents are faced with a terrible decision — either wait for the rath of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to force the project through or get it done now at a huge price tag.
The expense of the project keeps climbing, especially with construction costs going up.
A group of residents in the affected area have been working for years to secure grants or low-interest loans that would help lower the assessment costs. The Ohio EPA has backed off the mandate for the sewer system to give the residents a chance to get federal or state funding.
The engineering cost of the system keeps getting larger, without one shovel of dirt turned.
It is easy to understand the frustration of the residents of Crestview, Belvedere and Highland Acres.
Hindsight is easy — saying the project should have been done years ago. Trust with the county commissioners is thin, even though the current board didn’t make the decision to ignore the sewer system.
The residents need to cooperate in the income surveys for the CDBG funding.
Then the county and its elected local, state and federal officials need to put the pressure on the federal agriculture department to provide grants and low-interest loans.
