SHARON
Grant to help city find, repair sewer leaks
The City of Sharon now has an additional $725,900 to help find and remove leaks from the sewer system.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency awarded a grant to the city to rehabilitate and replace sanitary sewer lines along Chestnut, Vine and Silver streets and through Bicentennial Park along North Water Avenue, Clark Street and Buhl Farm park.
The money was meant to be part of a federal matching grant but the agency decided to allow the city to count a state PENNVEST loan as the matching funds, Mayor Robert T. Price said. He said the city didn't have the money to put up the match.
PENNVEST is a low-interest state loan program that assists cities in infrastructure projects.
The city has already spent $2.1 million in grant money since 1999 eliminating 475,000 of excess water to the plant. The city must remove 2.2 million gallons of water a day from the plant in order to comply with state Department of Environmental Protection.
City officials are hoping by televising the sewer lines they can find and repair cracked pipes, locate drains from demolished houses that have been improperly capped and find runoff from rain and snow during wet weather that allows excess water into the sewage treatment plant.
The city submitted the plan to eliminate the excess water to DEP and the department must approve the plan by the end of the year.
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