NEW MIDDLETOWN — Mahoning County commissioners last week approved a $1.65-million sanitary project in the village, which will overlap with another similar project in the area.

Sanitary Engineer Bernie Petro explained the new project and provided an update on the other.

The commissioners awarded the $1,652,059 contract to Rudzik Excavating of Struthers for the

southwest Lake Evans sanitary sewer, pump station and force main project, slated to begin in July.

Petro took over as Sanitary Engineer in April, taking over responsibilities from Mahoning County Engineer Patrick Ginnetti, who remains in that office. In December, Ginnetti explained the details of a $40-million project being handled by Rudzik to convert a wastewater treatment plant in New Middletown to a pump station and reroute it to a treatment plant in Boardman.

While they are in very close proximity to each other, Petro said the Lake Evans project will route to the Struthers wastewater treatment plant because of the lay of the land.

“Water flows downhill, and when it doesn’t sometimes you put a pump station in,” he said.

In this case, the project will eliminate the small wastewater treatment plant at the Lake Club on the southwest side of Lake Evans, which Petro said has more than outlived its useful life.

The project will install an 8-inch gravity line beginning at South Avenue Extension, near the Lake Club, and extend 2,500 lineal feet to a new pump station on the Lake Club property, near the clubhouse.

From there, a 6-inch force main line will be installed, and extend 3,000 lineal feet along the western side of the lake, parallel to the golf course, and connect to a sewer on East Calla Road.

Petr said the project will include installing a generator on-site to ensure that waterflow will continue even during a power outage.

He said the wastewater treatment plant will be decommissioned, but not demolished, and the project is scheduled to take about a year.

“We’d like to get it in as fast as possible, but we’re ordering materials and a pump station that has to be built off-site and brought in,” he said. “Equipment procurement is always the weak link in any project.”

The other project, which Ginnetti described in December, was mandated years ago by the Ohio EPA. The EPA ordered the wastewater treatment plant on Unity Road in New Middletown to be converted from a treatment plant to a pump station. The plant sits at the headwaters of Honey Creek and the EPA determined that any additional effluent from the plant into the creek was likely to cause damage to the ecosystem.

“Honey Creek just didn’t have enough volume to support discharge,” Petro said. “It was a good decision we made to just convert it to a pump station and pump it to Five Points and then to the Boardman treatment plant on East Parkside.”

The county has completed upgrades at its Boardman wastewater treatment plant, which is where the Unity Road plant’s effluent will be rerouted, and installed a force main there. From that point, the new sanitary line will be built backwards to the Unity Road plant and the plant converted to a pump station.

The line will zigzag from Unity Road, up Middletown Road, down Baird Road, up Calla Road, down Springfield Road, then up Western Reserve to the Five Points pump station, and from there to the Boardman plant.

Petro said about 50% of the design is completed.

The project, which delayed the larger road project on Western Reserve Road in progress now, was delayed by as much as five years by changes in ownership of the railroad at Southern Boulevard, which Ginnetti said made it impossible to begin running lines under the tracks there.

Petro said the work has since been moving along in tandem with the Western Reserve project.

“Right now, we’re putting in the 12-inch force main, and once the pump station is completed, it’ll flow into that,” he said.