By Tom Davidson
Herald Staff Writer
SHARPSVILLE, SOUTH PYMATUNING TOWNSHIP
May 14, 2008 12:37 am
—
With seven days until Sharpsville leaders must tell contractors if they can turn dirt on a $10 million water treatment plant, council members Tuesday spent about two hours re-hashing different angles of the issue.
Crunch time is 7 p.m. today, the last regular council meeting before a May 20 deadline on the bids council opened in February that pegged the cost of construction at $8.06 million. Add to that the costs spent so far studying and designing a plant along with anticipated overruns and the cost comes in at about $10 million.
It’s cash the borough doesn’t have and doesn’t anticipate getting in a week.
Voices were raised several times, and council President Tom Lally had to gavel the packed borough building to order.
Under orders from the state Department of Environmental Protection to improve water quality, Sharpsville faces the choice of building a new plant or hooking up with a commercial supplier, most likely Aqua America.
The first option requires the town to borrow the cost of construction. The second could cost the borough less than it does to produce its own water.
The situation comes two years after voters overwhelmingly rejected a plan to sell the town’s water system to Aqua for $7 million.
But there are several “buts” to the issue.
“It’s not as simple as shutting down the plant and hooking up with Aqua,” councilman John Alfredo said.
He said an engineering study would need to be done to determine the effects of switching water supplies and that the borough might have to build pump stations or other infrastructure that could cost more money.
Alfredo disputed the numbers that were floated at a town hall meeting last week that indicated choosing Aqua was the most-cost-effective choice.
Most of the residents at the meeting favored buying bulk water.
The naysayers had at it on Tuesday: Alfredo and councilmen Chris Combine questioned whether buying bulk water is the best way for the borough to proceed.
The figures that have been presented are “unscientific and convenient” numbers, Combine said.
“To know, we have to compare apples to apples,” he said.
There’s also the fundamental issue of whether the borough should give up local control of water production, as voiced by Combine and Alfredo.
“We’re basically giving up our rights forever,” Alfredo said, if the borough stops treating its own water.
But the town can’t afford to proceed now, councilman Alex Kovach said.
“We’ve been turned down by everyone in the state,” he said of possible funding sources, including local banks.
This was reiterated by borough solicitor Joe Joseph Jr.
“In the end it just comes down to … in 7 days we have to tell a contractor what he’s going to do,” Joseph said. “We’re kind of like gerbils running on a big wheel, to no end.
“Does somebody have a 7-day solution? If anybody has $10 million to lend the borough, come forward,” Joseph said. “I can not put a square peg in a round hole, folks. Folks, I have 7 days, does anyone have $10 million?
“When our local banks turn us down for $10 million we have problems,” Joseph said.
Add to that a dispute with South Pymatuning Township over a bulk water agreement between the two parties and it ignites a firestorm of opinions.
The township buys water from the borough under a 25-year pact inked in 1996 that says the township is responsible for 40 percent of the cost of upgrades to the system. In the case of building a new plant, it’s $4 million, and it’s money that South Pymatuning Township Supervisor Joe Christoff said won’t be had without a legal battle.
That battle isn’t worth fighting, Joseph said.
“Nobody’s going to win and everybody stands to lose,” Joseph said, adding that it would likely take the courts more than a year to decide the issue.
“I don’t want to see the river dividing us and us throwing grenades back and forth at each other,” Alfredo said to Christoff.
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