YOUNGSTOWN — An expensive project to divert millions of gallons of sewage from the Mahoning River is more costly because of issues with a broken waterline.

The city’s board of control on Thursday approved a $44,426 increase in a contract with S.E.T. Inc. of Lowellville, which is doing the first phase of an interceptor sewer project. With the increase, the contract’s cost is $5,281,806.

Charles Shasho, deputy director of public works, said a waterline break caused water to leak for 29 days near Norfolk Southern Railway lines while the city waited for a valve to be shipped from Europe to fix the problem. That also required the railroad to use a safety officer near the leak, he said.

The other increases included a concrete casing around the 16-inch waterline and utility issues, Shasho said.

On June 20, the board of control approved $483,841 in change orders to S.E.T. for this project. Most of that work was for the construction of a tunnel under railroad tracks.

S.E.T.’s initial contract was $4,753,539. That price has increased by 11.1% because of change orders.

“We’re working with railroad issues,” Shasho said. “It’s been crazy.”

The work for this phase and another is needed to help divert sewage from the Mahoning River with most of the cost covered by the state.

The city received a $4.83 million grant in July 2023 from the state, using federal American Rescue Plan funds, as well as a $4 million loan from the state that forgives the repayment of the principal to pay for much of this two-phase project.

The project replaces aging, deteriorated combined storm and sanitary sewer lines with 10,800 linear feet of 60-inch and 48-inch lines with an access road, Shasho said.

When both phases of the interceptor sewer project are finished, it will eliminate three sewer overflows that discharge about 35.5 million gallons of combined sewage annually into the Mahoning River, according to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

S.E.T. started the first phase earlier this year and is expected to be finished in December. That work goes from West Avenue to Bridge Street, near Front Street. It eliminates one sewer overflow.

The board of control on June 5 awarded a $5,235,704 contract for the second phase of this work to Rudzik Excavating Inc. of Struthers.

Rudzik’s base bid was $4,529,354 with a $706,350 add-on to install concrete encasements around the pipes near Norfolk Southern train lines.

But the city received a waiver from the railroad for the encasements, Shasho said.

Shasho said he expects change orders from Rudzik for this work.

Rudzik should have its part of the project complete by January, Shasho said.

That phase goes from Bridge Street to Division Street and eliminates two sewer overflows.

The city’s decision to do this project was part of the reason the federal government agreed to permit Youngstown to reduce the size of its wet weather facility that is one of three phases in a wastewater consent decree.

The decree, signed in 2014, required the city to construct a 100-million-gallon-per-day wet weather facility. The structures in the facility would treat excess combined sewage during heavy rainstorms and then release the water.

An agreement finalized in October by a federal judge reduces the project to a facility that treats 80 million gallons a day of sewage, which the city argued is the appropriate amount.

In a Nov. 12, 2024, amended motion to modify the 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 would start in January 2026 and take about two years to complete with construction on multiple buildings, pump stations and tunnels starting in 2028.