YOUNGSTOWN — City council agreed to allow the board of control to spend up to $33 million for final design and construction administration on building a facility as part of its major wastewater improvement project.

Council voted 6-0 Wednesday on the legislation with Councilman Julius Oliver, D-1st Ward, absent.

The work is for an 80-million-gallon-per-day wet weather facility. The structures in the facility would treat excess combined sewage during heaving rainstorms and then release the water.

The city’s initial agreement back in 2014 to building a 100-million-gallon-per-day facility, the rising cost of the work and the disputed need for such a large system were the reasons why the city argued in a March 15, 2024, motion to reopen the federal consent decree that require it to make significant and expensive improvements to its wastewater system.

“Through our negotiations with the Department of Justice, we got them to agree to an 80-million-gallon facility,” said Charles Shasho, deputy director of public works.

Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th Ward, said the 20% reduction in the size of the project is “pretty substantial.”

The city retained MS Consultants Inc. of Youngstown and Arcadis, a national firm, to do preliminary designs on the wet weather facility, Shasho said. Both firms have done extensive work for the city over the years.

The companies would handle the final design work on the wet weather facility, which includes seven different design projects, as part of the $33 million expense, Shasho said. One of the firms or possibly a third would handle the construction administration phase of the work, estimated to cost $17 million, Shasho said.

During negotiations between the city and the federal government, which included four extensions, an agreement was reached to honor the city’s request for the smaller facility. Judge Christopher A. Boyko of the U.S. District Court’s Northern District of Ohio finalized the deal Oct. 9.

In a Nov. 12, 2024, amended motion to modify a 201 consent decree, attorney Terrence S. Finn of the Roetzel & Andress law firm in Akron, which represents the city, wrote the project’s initial estimate was $62 million, but is now more than $240 million.

The smaller facility has a preliminary cost estimate of about $180 million, but that is most likely to change once design work is done.

Design work on the facility must start in January 2026 and take about two years to complete with construction on multiple buildings, pump stations and tunnels starting in 2028, Shasho said.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency had originally ordered the city in 2002 to do $310 million worth of work, but it was negotiated down to $160 million in 2014 with the expectation it would be finished in 20 years.

The city plans to have all of the work done by Oct. 1, 2035.

The city insisted in court filings that if Youngstown complied with the mandates the cost would be about $380 million to $400 million – well over twice what it agreed to do 11 years ago.

In a June 6 court filing, the federal government stated it “successfully finalized a proposed resolution” to the reduced facility because the city is diverting 35.5 million gallons of combined sewage annually into the Mahoning River in an ongoing project, costing about $10.5 million, as well as an earlier deadline on the wet weather facility and a compressed schedule on an interceptor sewer project to keep wastewater from 13 lines – the city revised it in October to 14 – from flowing into Mill Creek Park’s Lake Glacier and Lake Cohasset.

As part of the federal consent decree, the city’s board of control on Oct. 9 approved a $42,771,942 contract with Marucci & Gaffney Excavating Co. of Youngstown for the first two phases of a four-part project to keep water from flowing into the two Mill Creek Park lakes.

The first two phases will focus on Lake Glacier, eliminating four of the 14 overflow lines. The project will replace about 8,000 to 9,000 linear feet of sewer lines that range in size from 36 inches to 60 inches with a new 96-inch sewer line.

There will also be bridge work, river crossings, efforts to lower the lake and the relocation of utilities.

The work is supposed to start in January, but Shasho said he wants the work to begin sooner.

The project is supposed to be finished no later than May 29, 2028, but Shasho said he expected it to be done in late 2027.

When the work starts, several streets, trails and structures at the park will be closed during the duration of the project.

Boyko sided with the United States Sept. 2 in its demand for the city to pay a $739,500 penalty for missing deadlines on two phases of the wastewater project.

The city missed milestone dates for the completion of an upgrade to its wastewater treatment plant and the submission of preliminary designs for the Mill Creek Park sewer interceptor project.

The city paid the penalty Sept. 24.

The project’s first phase upgraded the city’s wastewater treatment plant and was completed Feb. 3, 2021. But Boyko agreed with the federal government’s argument that sludge handling improvements, not finished until June 30, 2021, were part of that project.

The project was supposed to be finished July 11, 2020, and makes up the largest part of the penalty imposed on Youngstown.

The initial construction estimate was $37.3 million, but the city said it cost $70 million.

That work helped reduce the sewer overflows that would be part of the wet weather facility project, a city court filing states.

The city also missed the April 15, 2021, milestone to submit the preliminary design report for the Mill Creek project.

Design work was supposed to start July 11, 2020, and construction was to begin April 5, 2024.

The city plans a compressed schedule with the third part done by April 18, 2031, and the final part by Sept. 29, 2032.

That project was estimated to cost $47.7 million and will now cost more than $72 million, according to a court filing from the city.