Last week the proposed $14 million upgrade at the Valley Joint Sewage Treatment Plant was the topic of a lengthy discussion by members of the Sayre Borough Council.
And two key points came out of that discussion — one, that this upgrade will result in essentially a newly-constructed sewer plant; and two, there may be non-construction alternatives that the authority could look into that would be far less costly than the $14 million price tag that is being bandied about now.
    The key point about this $14 million pricetag is that users in the Valley will have to fund this project, as there is no state or federal grant funding available for this endeavor. The project is being mandated by both the state, under the 2000 Chesapeake Bay agreement signed by the states of Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland, and the federal Clean Water Act.
    The cost of the project will be equally distributed over the users in the four municipalities based on the percentage of capacity that the municipality owns in the plant. Currently, Sayre Borough owns 50 percent of the capacity of the 2.4 million gallon plant, while Athens Borough owns 23 percent, Athens Township owns 20 percent and South Waverly owns 7 percent.
    Add on to the fact that this construction may not even be needed and you can understand why many local officials are upset over this recent turn of events.
    At this week’s Sayre council meeting, Brian Huckabee — project engineer for Sweetland Engineering Inc. — referred to a handout from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania regarding the Chesapeake Bay initiative that was provided to the council.
    “The second bullet (point) on that page says that ‘Pennsylvania’s Chesapeake Bay compliance plan does not require sewage treatment plants to undertake capital upgrades and nutrient reduction technology,’” he said. “All it requires is that the nutrient reduction takes place. It is not requiring that the Valley pay $14 million to comply with this. There are a large variety of non-structural alternatives that can be used to reduce the nutrients and get credit for the nitrogen (discharge into the Chesapeake Bay) and I don’t know if anything has ever been discussed or analyzed concerning these alternatives.”
    “There is basically an open market for credits,” said Huckabee. “I have not delved into how it functions, how it works, but that is a non-structural modification to your discharge and it is not to going to cost us $14 million.”
    Why hasn’t the Valley Joint Sewer Authority — which oversees the treatment plant — looked into this option even further?
    We understand that there is a timeline attached to this upgrade — the new plant must be operational by 2012 — but the fact that the authority has not even bothered to get a second opinion on this project is wrong on so many levels, especially considering how the authority board contains a so-called “tax watchdog” who should be raising more of an objection to this.
    Simply put, the authority, by not getting a second opinion on this matter, is failing the taxpayers of this Valley who are going to have to foot the bill for this massive upgrade.
The authority seriously needs to look at another option to this project. To do otherwise and burden the taxpayers of this Valley with a $14 million bill is unforgivable.