ZELIENOPLE — The Harmony and Zelienople volunteer fire departments are merging.

The new department will be called the Harmony Fire District and will be identified as Station No. 22.

They voted Monday to combining their departments, and plan to do so by the end of the year.

A task force assembled in November to consider the merger now will work out the logistics of actually merger, said Scott Garing, Zelienople assistant chief.

He said, “We got such an overwhelming ‘yes’ from both departments. It was a tremendous feeling based on all the work we’ve been put into it so far, it’s finally coming to fruition.”

The Zelienople department will be absorbed into the Harmony department, meaning it will not need to establish a new legal 501c3 organization, but only a name change, Garing said.

The Zelienople department’s station is on West Beaver Street in Zelienople, and Harmony has a station on Main Street in Harmony and a substation on Route 19 in Lancaster Township.

They will need to combine equipment and to establish new bylaws and standard operating guidelines.

The task force includes representatives of both fire departments as well as representatives of the municipalities they serve: Harmony, Zelienople, Jackson Township and Lancaster Township.