By Jason Klaiber
Staff Writer
At its Feb. 26 meeting, the Manlius Town Board authorized Supervisor Ed Theobald to sign a lease presented by the Onondaga County Department of Water Environment Protection (WEP).
The lease, contingent upon legal review, would allow the county to take over the town’s sewers.
“This consolidation initiative is not a power play,” WEP Commissioner Frank Mento said. “This is about economic development within the entire community.”
Local municipalities presently oversee local sewers, small pump stations, manholes and laterals.
Some of these municipalities maintain sewer funds and others dip into their general funds for service and other needs.
Backed by a sewer fund with a budget for operations and management, the county presides over wastewater treatment plants, pump stations and trunk sewers.
The county’s residents have been paying an annual sewer unit charge of $448.81 to the county on top of any local municipal charges.
A unit refers to the amount of water discharged on a yearly basis from a given property to the sewer system.
The consolidation path would lead to the town subsidizing the operational expenses of other municipalities’ systems, some of which could potentially be deteriorating in condition, but it also means those municipalities would provide financial assistance toward Manlius’ system if it needed to be repaired at any point in time.
“The initial inequity is a bit askew, however it does come full circle,” Mento said to the board. “Do you want to be responsible 10 years from now for your own system on the backs of your own taxpayers when everybody else is consolidated?”
According to Mento, the consolidation route would result in “tremendous savings” for the town and eliminate competition among neighboring municipalities for grant funding.
Shannon Harty, the deputy WEP commissioner, said sanitary sewer evaluation studies for the county have been conducted most recently by Cazenovia engineering consultant GHD.
The firm detailed the parts of the sewer system likely to experience problems with infiltration/inflow (I/I).
Harty said the county can detect trouble in the sewer system with the help of robotic inspection cameras as well as inflow meters that check to see if the pipes are being filled more quickly than usual, a sign that rainwater has gotten into broken pipes.
Onondaga County contains six service areas, each with its own wastewater treatment plant.
The Town of Manlius is serviced under the Meadowbrook-Limestone Wastewater Treatment Plant.
In other news
Last week, Brolex Properties LLC withdrew its request to construct five three-story apartment buildings next to Megnin Farms.
At the Feb. 26 town board meeting, Brolex Properties proposed a zone change for a parcel on Highbridge Road in Fayetteville. The company looks to obtain a switch from Residential 1 to Residential 5 zoning for a portion of the property.
A public hearing has been scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on March 25 at the town hall on Brooklea Drive concerning Source Renewables’ proposed construction of a photovoltaic array with battery storage on the south side of Taft Road, just east of the Dewitt town line.
