Part of the grant funds to help property owners connect their homes to a new sewer system being planned for Marion Township will be used to replace a failing water main from the 1970s.

Wendy Leslie, the county's Community Development Block Grant coordinator, told the commissioners at their Wednesday meeting that the water line has been patched repeatedly over more than four decades and is “getting close to an emergency situation.”

She said Marion Township officials have attempted to find emergency funding to replace the water line, but to no avail.

Leslie supplied the commissioners with photos of water shooting into the air from a past failure in the pipe.

She asked the commissioners to approve using $73,769 from a fund that will assist low- and moderate-income property owners with the costs of connecting their homes to sewer main lines to pay for the replacement of the water line.

“Our only answer was to modify some of these sewer fundings to ensure they are going to have water,” Leslie said.

Even with the funds removed to pay for the new water line, the sewer lateral fund would still have more than $121,000 to help homeowners connect to the future sewer system, Leslie said.

She said because applications to get help connecting to the new sewer system have not yet been offered to the residents of Boyers, there is no way of knowing how many households will apply for the funding.

But Leslie said in a similar project in Mercer Township, $95,000 was left over after homeowners applied for and received grants to connect their homes to the sewer main.

“We think we're well within what we're going to need,” Leslie said.

She said if the $121,000 is expended, there are other ways to provide funding to eligible homeowners who have applied for connection assistance.

The commissioners voted unanimously to approve using connection fund money to replace the water line.

“The challenges never seem to end in the water and sewer business,” said Leslie Osche, commissioners chairwoman.

The commissioners also voted to approve the bidding process for the water line, which Leslie said may not occur until January.

An old sewer system was left behind by U.S. Steel decades ago when it ceased operations at the Boyers mine, now the Iron Mountain specialty storage facility.

At the time, the lagoon-type sewer system served 50 homes and was operating properly. But no plan was ever put into place for routine maintenance of the plant, and it has deteriorated immensely.

The state Department of Environmental Protection placed responsibility for the sewer system in the hands of Marion Township after U.S. Steel ceased ownership.

Engineers more than two years ago estimated the project cost at more than $6 million, and Marion Township in 2018 submitted a request for $500,000 in funds from the county infrastructure bank.

When Mark Gordon, the county's chief of economic development and planning who oversees the infrastructure bank, saw the modest means of the homes involved in the project and the financial limitations of Marion Township, he decided to collaborate with Joe Saeler, director of the Community Development Corporation of Butler County, and others to study ways the project cost could be decreased and how to avoid financially burdening the homeowners involved.

The men got the project costs reduced to $4.3 million, and Marion Township in October secured a grant and loan from the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority for $4.1 million.

The old lagoon system will be replaced with a modern sewage treatment system.

Once completed, the new sewer system would serve about 150 homes in and near the village of Boyers, and tap-in for homes new to the system would be mandatory to alleviate the environmental concerns the old lagoon system is causing.