Staff photo / Ashley Fox.... Jerry Seville, a surveyor with CT Consultants, obtains data on properties along Pebble Beach Drive in Canfield Township on Monday morning. The engineering firm is starting the planning and design phase of a project that would replace 800 feet of failed stormwater pipe from a May 2019 flooding event that left the roadway in several inches of flowing water.

CANFIELD TOWNSHIP — Communities are still grappling with a massive storm in May 2019 and trying to secure funding for failed infrastructure.

One of those communities is Canfield Township.

During the May 28, 2019, historic rainfall that annihilated the area, a 48-inch storm sewer collapsed on Pebble Beach Drive in three residents’ yards.

Now, CT Consultants is performing surveying for planning and design of work.

Last week, it was announced that Canfield Township is one of a handful of communities in Northeast Ohio to receive low-interest loans from the Water Pollution Control Loan Fund through the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

ABC Water and Stormwater Water is set to receive $35,900 to design the stormwater infrastructure on Pebble Beach Drive.

Total cost of the project is anticipated to be $560,280.

Grant opportunities would mean construction would begin in 2022 or 2023, said Keith Rogers, township administrator and ABC Water and Stormwater District contact for Canfield Township, leaving the loan as the best option for prompt response.

The five-year loan was broken down into the engineering phase and then construction, Rogers said.

The district includes Austintown, Boardman and Canfield townships, and is funded by taxpayers in those areas.

Initially, there were gray areas about who would be funding the projects.

Discussing the matter with the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office, Rogers said ultimately the homeowners are responsible for the repairs, a series of “man holes” where the pipe has collapsed.

One of the holes is 11 feet deep, with another stretching under a driveway, which is blocked off so vehicles do not use it in case it fails. Each of the holes is eroding.

Trustees turned to the water district for help, Rogers said, because replacing the 800 feet of storm sewer would cost nearly three years of the stormwater fees brought in by Canfield Township.

“This is a perfect example of years of trying to develop the ABC Water District,” said Canfield Township Trustee Brian Governor.

“This is an ideal situation where our hands were tied, and the ABC District had the authority to help our residents out in ways we couldn’t as a township,” Governor said.

Townships are not allowed to perform work on private property that is outside of the road right-of-way or out of the bounds of an easement, he said.

In the Pebble Beach Drive project, there were also gray areas of where easements were located, and to whom they belong.

A storm water easement on Pebble Beach Drive through the homeowners’ front yards was never dedicated to the township, said Rogers.

The developer recorded the easement as “stormwater easement” on paperwork. The question became who is responsible for maintaining the easement, Rogers said.

That’s when the trustees asked the ABC district for help, Rogers said.

The project is anticipated to go out to bid in the summer with work completed by the end of the year.

afox@vindy.com