FREEPORT — Customers of the Municipal Authority of Buffalo Township next year will get water from a new treatment plant.

The authority board on Thursday awarded a $4.7 million contract to Kukurin Contracting of Washington Township in Westmoreland County for constructing the plant and a $704,990 contract to Kirby Electric Services of Marshall Township for related electrical work.

Don Amadee, authority manager, said in an interview work on the new plant, which will be on Riverside Drive in the borough, will begin as soon as possible.

“Construction will take a year,” he said.

The new 7,800-square-foot facility with a 2,700-square-foot garage and lab replaces a treatment plant built in 1919.

The 93-old plant, which is 3,500 square feet, uses the traditional sand and gravel filtering system.

“Essentially, it strains water as it goes through,” Amadee said.

The new plant will use microfiltration to filter out bacteria and debris.

Amadee described the plastic membrane the water enters as looking like straws, which have small pores.

“It’s large enough for a molecule of water to pass through,” he said about each pore.

Amadee said coagulation and sediment will be used to filter out dissolved solids.

The authority has 2,800 water customers in Buffalo Township and Freeport as well as supplying several hundred customers of the South Buffalo Township Municipal Authority.

The authority board also awarded a $403,060 contract to Bison Construction in Fairmont City, Clarion County for waterline replacement in Freeport.

Originally, 18,000 feet of water line was to be replaced. However, the project was scaled back to roughly 3,000 feet.

“We cut the project back to fit the budget,” Amadee said.

Funding all the costs tied to the project is a roughly $6 million loan from the Rural Utilities Service, a U.S. Department of Agriculture agency, and a $480,000 state H2O grant.

Amadee said the authority is seeking another $1.3 million from the RUS.