SALEM - The aged and eroded sanitary sewer line on Snyder Road will top the agenda when the Utilities Commission meets next week, Commissioner Primo Citino told the Utilities Committee on Tuesday.
The eight-inch, cast-iron line runs from a pump station on the south side of Snyder Road, crosses under the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks and a ditch and then angles toward the Chappell and Zimmerman facility on the other side.
Utilities Superintendent Don Weingart told the Utilities Commission last month it would cost about $143,000 to fix.
The line services the southern part of the city and is crucial to keeping the Fresh Mark meat packaging plant, which discharges between 350,000 to 400,000 gallons a day through it, operating.
Fresh Mark, one of the largest employers in Columbiana County, employs about 800 people.
Mayor Jerry Wolford said he spoke to a Fresh Mark official who was "very concerned" about it.
Last December, utilities department Field Supervisor Larry Altenhof had a crew repairing a 36-inch long section of the line that had deteriorated and leaked.
The line was installed in 1963 and the danger is a large break could spill hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the Stone Run Creek.
Wolford said, "If it does break we really would have some bills."
Altenhof said the normal pipe thickness is a quarter-of-an-inch and the pipe he examined had thinned down to 1/16th-of-an-inch.
"It was wearing out from the inside," he told the utilities commission last month.
A break could also disrupt production at the Fresh Mark plant and Citino told the committee that, "I know there won't be a problem" as far as action by the commission.
Committee member Dave Nestic asked if a liner could be used to repair it and Altenhof said the Environmental Protection Agency won't approve it. He said they had to bore through and install a new line.
Auditor Jim Armeni, who missed part of the meeting, told city council, which met later, that if the line collapsed there was money in the budget for Weingart to "go right into fixing it" without bidding it out.
The pump station handles sewage from the Kent State University Salem Campus at its southernmost edge, and from Salmar Drive and the Salem Golf Club areas.
In other business, the committee changed the language for approving tap-ins to existing lines to say the utilities commission, rather than the utilities superintendent, will approve them.
Councilman Earl A. Schory II opposed the language change which Chairman Dennis Groves said was pointed out by Utilities Commission Chairman Geoff Goll.
Groves said that for the past 15 years the decision has been made by the superintendent and Schory said he was concerned "about council giving away its power." Previously council had the final say in tap-ins, but Groves said the change was to streamline the process so council didn't have to deal with it.
He said if it involved a line extension, then council would review it and he added "council can always put restrictions on."
Schory said the decision was previously made by council because there were political issues that could be attached to tap-ins. He explained he didn't mean the Democratic or Republican type of politics after Committee member Rita Joseph O'Leary asked why politics was considered.
Schory pointed to other agencies in the county noting "all these things are bigger than one house."
Nestic agreed with O'Leary saying, "It's a case of looking for problems where there aren't any."
He said if problems cropped up council could take another look.
He said the utilities commission pays more attention to it.
"I don't see giving up control as necessarily a bad thing," Nestic said and Groves said the intent was to "make available more water to more people."
Citino said it takes a minimum of two months for a tap-in and the commission always goes the "extra step" by involving Weingart and the law director.
The committee approved the change.
Larry Shields can be reached at lshields@salemnews.net
