County officials will seek $5 million in additional state money to finish funding a sewage project in Marion Township.

County commissioners Wednesday approved a request by Mark Gordon, county economic development chieftain, to apply for a grant to finance the reconstruction of sewage facilities in the village of Boyers.

The grant, Gordon said, would alleviate the economic burden of the sewage project on Boyers residents, who earn a low average income. A large percentage of Boyers households earn $17,000 a year — $10,000 under the federal poverty level for a family of four.

Gordon noted the reconstruction is necessary due to a state consent decree on Marion Township.

“You look at the backyards up there, and there’s sewage waste in their backyards and their kids are playing in it,” Gordon said in an April interview. “I wouldn’t want that for my kids. You wouldn’t want that for your kids.”

The sewage issue comes from a combination of both a failing public sewer system and failing septic systems.

According to Gordon, the sewage from roughly two dozen Boyers households is treated by a facility which is roughly 50 years old. Others have “failing on-lot systems.”

The state Department of Environmental Protection placed a consent decree on Marion Township, which is responsible for the sewage system, in 2012, Gordon said.

“It’s technically obsolete,” Gordon said. “It’s beyond its useful life.”

The public sewer system in Boyers is the remnant from an industrial site, according to Gordon. When the industry left, it made it available to 24 households.

But 24 households, according to Gordon, can’t sustain the financial needs of a sewage treatment facility. While an authority — and later Marion Township — were responsible for collecting bills and maintaining the facility, the funds just couldn’t keep up.

Two dozen homes being unable to pay for a sewer system is the same issue in Marion Township today, Gordon said. That’s why homes with failing on-lot systems are being included in the proposed new sewage system.

“You can’t build a sewage treatment plant for just 24 homes, so you look at that and think maybe you build a sewage treatment plan for 100 homes,” Gordon said. “And even when you expand it to that 100, you're talking $5.5 (million), $6 million. That’s a tall order for 100 houses. That’s $60,000 apiece.”

Butler County’s involvement in the Boyers’ sewage situation is to help find funds to finance the project.

Right now, Gordon said, the county has secured some grant and loan funds for the sewage replacement.

“How do we bring any and all dollars and make them available to start putting that funding package together?” he said in April. “We got some CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) money, and we got some PennVEST money and some PennVEST grant and a PennVEST loan, but even with those things we’re about $2.7 million short.”

On top of the current shortfall, according to Gordon, the current system of funding isn’t ideal.

“That included a PennVEST loan that, when you talk about a repayment on a monthly basis for 20 years, the repayment was around $90 a month,” Gordon said. “For some of those residents, that's a hard one to comply with. They just don’t have it.

“Ninety-five dollars a month, $1,200 a year, for a family that’s making about $17,000 a year. You haven’t put food on the table, the price of water, the price of utilities, taxes, any of that.”

Should the county receive additional grant funds for the project from the application commissioners approved Wednesday, Gordon estimated it would fully fund the project, removing the need to charge Boyers residents to repay any loans to erect a new sewage facility.