YOUNGSTOWN — With an estimated $170 million wastewater improvement project expected to commence in the fall, city council will be asked Wednesday to permit the purchase of property and easements for the work.

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.

It is the third part of work, costing more than $300 million when done, by the city to improve its wastewater system as mandated by the federal government.

Two items on council’s agenda are related to the wet weather facility.

One is to spend up to $250,000 to acquire about 35 parcels and allow the board of control to enter into agreements for temporary access and permanent easements.

The other ordinance is to permit the board of control to spend up to $12,500 to buy 530 Gibson St., the clubhouse of the Afro Dogs Motorcycle Club.

Charles Shasho, the city’s deputy director of public works, said the parcels the club now owns will be used for the “grit and screening” building — one of six contracts for the wet weather facility project, which is expected to cost about $170 million.

The project includes multiple buildings, pump stations and tunnels.

“We’re bidding the early site package in the fall,” Shasho said. “The whole site is quite large — acres and acres.”

The wet weather project will start this fall with early preparation work, such as grading work, Shasho said.

The project must be finished by 2030 under a federal consent decree.

The board of control in December approved $13.52 million in contracts — $7.63 million to MS Consultants Inc. of Youngstown and $5.89 million to Arcadis U.S. Inc., a national company — for final design and construction administration of the work.

Also, Arcadis will handle the construction administration phase of the work at a cost of about $17 million, Shasho said.

Both companies did preliminary design work on the wet weather facility in addition to numerous other projects for the city over the years.

NEGOTIATIONS

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

During lengthy negotiations between the city and the federal government, 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 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 it is now more than $240 million.

The smaller 80-million-gallon facility has a preliminary cost estimate of about $170 million – a savings of at least $70 million.

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 said in court filings that if Youngstown complied with the mandates, the cost of all of the work would be about $380 million to $400 million – well over twice what it agreed to do in 2014.

In a June 6, 2025, court filing, the federal government stated it “successfully finalized a proposed resolution” to the reduced facility because the city diverted 35.5 million gallons of combined sewage annually into the Mahoning River in a $10.35 million project that recently finished, as well as an earlier deadline on the wet weather facility and a compressed schedule on an interceptor sewer project to keep wastewater from 14 combined sewer overflow lines from dumping into Mill Creek Park’s Lake Glacier and Lake Cohasset.

As part of the federal consent decree, the city hired Marucci & Gaffney Excavating Co. of Youngstown for $42.8 million 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, which started in December, are to Lake Glacier, eliminating four of the 14 overflow lines. The project is replacing 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, as well as bridge work, river crossings, efforts to lower the lake and the relocation of utilities.

The project is supposed to be finished no later than May 29, 2028.

The city plans a compressed schedule with the third phase of the interceptor sewer work at the park to be 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.

The city finished the first part of the sewer improvement work – upgrades to its wastewater treatment plant – on June 30, 2021, about a year later than required by the federal government.

The city paid a $739,500 penalty Sept. 24 for missing the deadline on the wastewater treatment plant work and for missing an April 15, 2021, milestone to submit the preliminary design report for the Mill Creek sewer project.