CONNOQUENESSING TWP — Supervisors and the Connoquenessing Township Sewer Authority will hold a special public meeting later this month to discuss potential plans for a sewage system for the township.

Officials hope the public meeting will lead to progress in the township’s sewage efforts.

No date and time for the meeting was announced when the two parties agreed to set up the event during the supervisors’ meeting on Wednesday night, Feb. 7.

“Right now, all the options are on the table,” said sewer authority member Lambert Rosenbaum.

This comes on the heels of a recent meeting of the authority on Jan. 31, where Gibson-Thomas Engineering presented five proposals for how to proceed. Among the options presented were a 940-connection system estimated to cost around $57 million.

Other options include connecting Connoquenessing’s sewage system to the neighboring Butler Area Sewer Authority or Saxonburg Area Authority systems.

The township in recent years has been under pressure to upgrade its public sewage system to satisfy the requirements of the Pennsylvania Sewage Facilities Act, better known as Act 537. The act requires municipalities to have a plan to address public wastewater needs.

The sewage system became a hot-button issue for township residents, who packed meetings to raise concerns about the project’s rising costs and possible effects on their homes. A Facebook group, “Conno Sewer Concerns,” formed and now boasts 305 members.

“People had concerns with the cost,” Rosenbaum said. “The costs changed three different times.”

When the first plans for the sewage system were drafted in 2016, it was estimated to cost $14.8 million. Estimates soon swelled to $22.5 million, then $28 million.

By mid-2022, local engineering firm Herbert, Rowland & Grubic determined that bids for the project would have come in around $50 million had the project gone out to bid that month. This led to a smaller-scale sewage project to cut costs.

By June 2023, the state Department of Environmental Protection officials charging them with violating the Pennsylvania Sewage Facilities Act. According to the DEP, the township’s lack of public sewage facilities had led to water pollution, and the agency cited the township with 53 violations.

During Wednesday night’s meeting, sewer authority chairman Bruce Steinhiser noted there would be added costs with pursuing the Saxonburg plan. If this plan were implemented, sewage would needed to be treated twice due to the intricacies of the SAA treatment system.

“Before the sewage gets discharged into the Saxonburg plant, it would require another chlorination pump station for treatment,” sewer authority chairman Bruce Steinhiser said.

Steinhiser also said the sewer authority would hold a meeting with Pennsylvania American Water as soon as the company worked out its still-in-progress merger with Butler Area Sewer Authority.

“I don’t want division amongst the people,” said Rosenbaum. “We’re trying to do our best to come up with the least cost and meet the requirements.”