Nov 17, 2016 3 min read

WAYNESBURG – Several Greene County sewer and waterline projects were approved by the county to seek state funding for the Community Development Block Grant program.

Four projects were approved by the county during a second public hearing Wednesday morning, giving them the green light to apply for the state’s annual entitlement grant program, which gave Greene County about $510,969 to distribute to community projects, county CDBG Administrator Crystal Simmons said.

“We have an urgent need for water and sewage infrastructure in the county,” she said. “Around this time, there are a lot of systems that need help, especially in the lower-income areas because the rates have always been kept low and it’s difficult to fund those large infrastructure projects.”

The state mandates, because of population size, three of those communities are Franklin Township, Waynesburg Borough and Cumberland Township. This year, Waynesburg applied for $69,171 for a multiyear project for sewage characterization and Franklin Township applied for $90,111 for a multiyear waterline extension along Orndoff Road, Simmons said. Cumberland Township’s allotment of $85,679, if approved by the state, will go towards occupied residential housing rehabilitation.

Marcia Sonneborn, community development administrator for Cumberland Township, said there are 60 residences on a waiting list for rehabilitation and some of them have been there since 2010.

“The lowest that list has ever been was 30,” Sonneborn said. “It’s probably as high as it’s ever been, because we’re not able to do as many as we used to. It’s been a long term goal of the township and we’ve rehabbed 206 houses since 1984.”

She said if the CDBG money is approved, they should be able to rehab about four or five houses, from roofing and basement renovations to sewage, plumbing, heating, ventilation and smoke alarms.

Every year, a fourth project, for a non-entitled community, is selected by the county, and this year that $178,190 will go to Wayne Township for a sewage line replacement along Oak Forest Road, Simmons said. The rest of the $510,969, about $92,000, will go toward the administration of the projects.

Simmons said that although Dunkard Township’s sewage rehabilitation project and Whitley Township’s project to extend a waterline along Route 19 were not approved for this year’s funding, they will be considered for the funding over the next three years.

Greene County officials also approved that Monongahela Township apply for a separate, competitive grant application with the state’s community development funding for up to $750,000 for the Dunkard Valley Water Authority Stoney Hill waterline rehabilitation project.

That money would go toward replacing water meters, which is a drop in the bucket for the $14 million project to merge the infrastructure for Dunkard Valley Joint Water Authority customers with Southwestern Pennsylvania Water Authority.