YOUNGSTOWN — Rehabilitating the city’s two incinerators to burn sludge — and how to pay for the potential $27.2 million project — are far from certain as city council members heard financial proposals that range from costing nothing to $785,000 annually for 20 years.

Officials with MS Consultants Inc. of Youngstown — designing and engineering the project with Black & Veatch of Overland Park, Kan. — have provided four options to council’s infrastructure and general improvements committee for the work, estimated to cost $24 million. Design and engineering will cost $3.2 million.

One proposal calls for the $24 million cost to be divided evenly among the city’s American Rescue Plan allocation, a federal earmark and a grant from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

That scenario wouldn’t cost the city any money and save the $1.07 million it is paying this year to the Carbon Limestone Landfill in Lowellville to take the sludge with that price expected to increase.

The city’s wastewater treatment plant used two incinerators that burned sludge from 1956 until 2016. The U.S. EPA in 2016 required the city to shut them down because of emission violations.

The city has since taken its sludge to the Carbon Limestone Landfill. Its monthly sludge production is about 1,100 tons a month, according to MS. The $1.07 million this year represents a 30 percent increase from 2021, according to Craig J. Mulichak, MS’s regional operations leader.

The annual operation costs of the city’s incinerators is estimated at $650,000.

‘LOFTY GOAL’

Katie Phillips, an urban planner for MS, told the committee the proposal with the federal earmark and state grant “is very much a lofty goal.”

The EPA grant program is for projects that have already been designed and are “shovel ready,” according to an MS document. This project is about 30 percent designed.

The “worst-case scenario” would be for the city to borrow $24 million from the EPA with a 1 percent interest rate repaid over 20 years, Phillips said. Including the landfill savings and the incinerator operating costs, that proposal would cost the city about $785,000 annually.

Finance Director Kyle Miasek pointed out the city is paying about $1 million a year on loans for previous projects at the wastewater treatment plant.

Two other proposals would be to use $8 million in ARP funds and a $16 million 1 percent loan or use $5 million in ARP funds with a $19 million loan at 1 percent.

The scenario to use $8 million in ARP money would cost the city $381,000 annually for 20 years while the other one would cost $532,500 annually for 20 years.

Charles Shasho, the city’s deputy director of public works, said he expects the project’s funding sources to be somewhere between those two proposals.

The incinerators would have a lifespan of about 25 to 30 years, Shasho said.

EXPENSES

The city’s administration had initially asked for all of the construction costs — first projected at $18 million — as well as estimated $2 million in design and engineering expenses to come entirely from Youngstown’s ARP allocation. The administration then updated the numbers to be $26 million for construction and $3 million for design and engineer and have that come from ARP.

The $29 million would have been about 35 percent of the total $82.7 million the city received in ARP funding.

But council members strongly opposed that suggestion and the administration backed off.

“My original ask was $18 million and now it’s down to $8 million,” Shasho said.

The expenses are $24 million for the construction and $3.2 million for design and engineering.

“We’ve been going through various options to reduce the costs,” Shasho said. “But the $24 million will change again. We’re a long way away. If we wait a year it could be a 20 percent increase.”

Council had previously approved $900,000 from the wastewater budget for the design and engineering work. The remaining $2.3 million would also come from the wastewater budget, but has to be approved by council, Shasho said.

Also, the plan was to have proposals for the rehabilitation work sought in July or August and have the work done around August 2023.

But Mulichak from MS now says the project has been pushed back to start early next year and would take two years to complete.

Councilwoman Samantha Turner, D-3rd Ward, said she has a lot more questions that need to be answered before “I can consider getting behind this. We have not exhausted our possibilities. I have a lot of questions before I would be willing to make a sizable investment.”

dskolnick@vindy.com