Export will bring back former engineer to help implement DEP's consent order

Export officials voted in 2017 to largely part ways with Latrobe engineering firm Gibson-Thomas, opting to share engineering services with neighboring Murrysville.

But, as the borough begins implementing the consent agreement hammered out over the summer between the Franklin Township Municipal Sanitary Authority, Export, Murrysville and others, they will bring Gibson-Thomas back into the fold, since the firm remains involved with several borough projects.

Nine separate entities are party to the state Department of Environmental Protection’s consent order, which lays out the following timeline for communities to address lingering issues with storm water inflow and infiltration:

• A camera must check each lateral line connecting to properties. Any structural issues discovered must be fixed by the property owner;
• Within four years of signing the agreement, each signatory must perform a smoke-and-dye test of its entire system. Any issues must be remedied within 18 months;
• By May 1, 2020, FTMSA must conduct a minimum of six months of flow monitoring within its system, including the months of March, April and May. FTMSA plans to use about 110 flow monitors to accomplish this, authority officials said.
• By September 2021, FTMSA must submit those flow monitoring results to the DEP;
• By March 2022, FTMSA must prepare a flow model, followed shortly afterward by a sanitary sewer overflow elimination plan, which all of the participating entities will help prepare, and which must be submitted by September 2022.

Right now, Export is “still in the visual identification phase,” FTMSA solicitor Wes Long told council members at their Oct. 1 meeting. “The (flow) model will reveal what the problems are.”

Long said Gibson-Thomas’s detailed understanding of Export’s sewer system will be valuable when it comes to seeking grants to help defray the cost of implementing the DEP’s consent order.

“We’re absolutely not going to be able to do this without Gibson-Thomas,” Long said.

Council President Barry Delissio said grants are available from $30,000 up to a half-million dollars, with a 15 percent match from the borough.

“It makes sense to go after that,” he said.