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HRG Helps Clients Obtain $12M+ in 1st Round of Local Share Account Statewide Grant Awards

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The Commonwealth Financing Authority (CFA) announced their first round of grant awards for the Local Share Account – Statewide program last week, including more than $12.9 million for HRG’s clients!

We helped 27 municipalities and municipal authorities successfully apply for funding for a wide variety of projects, including parks, wastewater treatment plant improvements, equipment purchases, water and sewer line rehabilitation, flood mitigation, and downtown revitalization. We’re proud to be helping these important projects move forward.

The CFA also announced funding awards for the Multimodal Transportation Fund, and two of our clients received funding for streetscape and revitalization projects.  The CFA Multimodal Transportation Fund is designed to promote economic development and safety through transportation enhancements. Eligible projects include streetscapes, lighting, sidewalks, and transit-oriented development.  If you have projects like this in mind, reach out to us! The new funding round just opened with a deadline of July 31st, and we’d love to help you develop a grant application strategy for your community’s needs.

Lauren Zumbrun Promoted to Group Manager

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Lauren Zumbrun has been promoted to Group Manager in the strategic management and capital solutions service group of HRG.

Lauren has deep knowledge of funding programs and more than 15 years of experience in community planning and economic development.  She puts this expertise to work to help communities optimize operations and proactively manage their infrastructure. She is a strategic thinker who excels at helping communities define their goals, prioritize projects to meet those goals, and develop funding strategies to support them.  Before joining HRG, she served as executive director of a non-profit downtown revitalization organization.

 

ABOUT HRG

HRG assists with the planning, design, and management of communities throughout Pennsylvania and the surrounding states. They optimize places for health, prosperity, and enjoyment with a focus on long-term value. The foundation of their work is civil engineering, but their team has diverse expertise in community planning and management, landscape architecture, environmental compliance, and sustainability. For more information, visit their website at www.hrg-inc.com

Act 43: What Water & Sewer Systems Need to Know about the Impact on Multi-Family Billings

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An amendment to the Pennsylvania Municipality Authorities Act allows the owner of a multi-family dwelling to request a billing adjustment every five years if the amount billed exceeds the usage by 30% or more.  This could have wide-ranging impacts for water and sewer authorities that serve multi-family dwellings.  Our vice president Russ McIntosh discusses all of the implications in two articles in The Authority, a magazine published by the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association.  The first article analyzes the language of  Act 43 line-by-line to advise authorities on how to comply. (Link opens in new tab.) The second article answers some frequently asked questions about Act 43 such as:

Is Act 43 retroactive?

Does act 43 affect the way I calculate tapping fees?

For larger garden apartment communities, should each building’s water meter be considered individually or combined with other buildings in the same community?

Act 43 requires authorities to compare metered water consumption with “actual usage” billed. How do you make this comparison if you bill on a flat rate?

Visit the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association website at the links above to read these articles, and reach out to us with any questions you may have.

Bumble Bee Hollow Residential Development

Municipal Budgeting in Uncertain Times

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Municipalities must finalize their budgets before the end of the year, but sometimes — like during a global pandemic — it’s hard to predict how much revenue will be available and what expenses the municipality will incur.  In this video series, a variety of experts offer their advice for how to craft a municipal budget that is resilient and responsive to change.

 

Lee Stinnett shares tips for municipal budget flexibility

Lee Stinnett, an attorney and municipal solicitor at Salzmann Hughes, offers 5 tips municipalities can use to build flexibility into their budgets, so they can move money around where it’s needed most and respond to unforeseen changes.

 

Bond attorney Jen Caron discusses restructuring and refinancing municipal debt

Bond attorney resident Jen Caron discusses options for refinancing and restructuring debt to increase cash flow.

 

Pat Dennis Discusses His Borough's Approach to Municipal Budgeting during COVID

Camp Hill Borough’s former manager Pat Dennis shares one municipality’s approach to budgeting during COVID and his efforts to maintain levels of service even though the borough anticipates reduced revenue in the coming year.

 

Josh Fox discusses capital improvement planning

Josh Fox discusses the benefits of a Capital Improvement Plan and the reasons why municipalities will want to stick to the plan even when budgets are tight or revenue and expenses are uncertain.

 

Minimizing the Cost of Connecting Homes with On-Lot Disposal Systems to Public Treatment

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Clean water is essential to life, and life is priceless.  But sometimes the cost of clean water can be too high for a community to bear. When it is, a mix of grants and forward-thinking design can make the cost more manageable as it did for the residents of a small village in Central Pennsylvania recently.

Kelly Township is a rural municipality in Union County, Pennsylvania, with a population of approximately 5,000 people.  The Village of Kelly Crossroads is located in a remote area of the township and consists of 47 homes along Crossroads Drive, SR 1004, and Fort Titzell Road, SR 1003. These homes had historically used on-lot disposal systems for their sewage.

An on-lot disposal system, commonly referred to as a septic system, is a 3-stage treatment process that happens on the site of the home, rather than at a community treatment plant.  Sewage collects in a septic tank on-site, where solids and scum are separated from the water via settling and flotation.  Pipes then carry the water to the soil where it is absorbed into the ground and purified in nature.

Unfortunately, these systems have a high rate of malfunction, and Kelly Crossroads was no exception. As part of an Act 537 Plan update in 2010, the township confirmed that almost half of the on-lot disposal systems in Kelly Crossroads were malfunctioning.  Another 45% exhibited signs of suspected or potential malfunction.  Only 6% of the on-lot disposal systems in Kelly Crossroads were functioning properly.

Map of malfunctioning on-lot disposal systems in Kelly Crossroads
This map shows the location of all the on-lot disposal systems in Kelly Crossroads, and the colors indicate how well each system was functioning.  As the map shows, some level of malfunction was widespread throughout the system.

To make matters worse, the township had good reason to believe that these malfunctions were contaminating residents’ water supply. A portion of the homes in Kelly Crossroads relied on wells for their water, and more than half of those wells tested positive for coliform bacteria, an indicator that human waste had come in contact with the water supply.

The township has an obligation to protect the public health, so it needed to address these malfunctioning on-lot disposal systems. Unfortunately, on-site repair was not an option for approximately 70% of the systems.  HRG analyzed several alternative approaches and determined that the most cost-effective option was to retire the on-lot disposal systems and replace them with a low-pressure system connected to a package treatment plant.

Cost-effective does not mean low-cost, however.  Connecting new homes to a public treatment system is always a costly endeavor, and the cost to connect Kelly Crossroads was estimated at more than $1.6 million.  Each homeowner would have to cover the cost of connecting to the system and share in the cost of building the infrastructure it required.  This would amount to several thousand dollars in fees per home, a significant burden for an area where the median household income is approximately $55,000.

HRG helped the township obtain nearly $1.5 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Utilities Service, 75% of which was grant money.  This funding has dramatically reduced the cost of sewer service to the community.

During initial planning phases of the project, user rates were projected to be as high as $200 per user each month. With the USDA funding, monthly user rates will be $69.

(Learn more about the USDA’s Rural Development Program here.)

 

HRG designed the system for future expansion of the user base in order to make the project more cost-effective.  Capacity is available to connect an additional 5-10 homes if they are constructed adjacent to the system through extension of the LPS system only.  Adequate space is also available for future expansion of the treatment plant facilities if more capacity becomes necessary.  Planning for future needs now helps to minimize costs down the road.

Construction began in August 2017 and was completed in August 2018.  Residents began utilizing the public system in June 2018.

Newly installed grinder pump at a home in the Village of Kelly Crossroads
A home in Kelly Crossroads with a recently installed grinder pump

Though the investment is significant, there is no better investment a community (or its residents) can make than in its own health and safety.

Municipalities like Kelly Township want to ensure their residents have clean water, but they are sensitive to how difficult monthly bills can be for residents to pay.  They need an engineer who can deliver high quality infrastructure, while helping the community find ways to afford the improvements they need.

A firm with a dedicated team of financial experts can skillfully position the municipality for grants as HRG did for Kelly Township.  At the same time, HRG’s water and wastewater professionals designed the system to accommodate future expansion in order to minimize costs moving forward.

Our wastewater treatment professionals are creative problem-solvers, and our financial specialists are experts in water and wastewater financing.  We have extensive experience with programs like the USDA’s Rural Development Program, whose support is crucial to ensuring rural communities have quality water and sewer service.

HRG has helped our clients obtain almost $2 billion in funding for their infrastructure from various state and federal programs, and we can help your community, too.  Contact a member of our Water/Wastewater Team to discuss your system’s needs.

 

SPECIFICATIONS:

  • Low Pressure Collection & Conveyance System w/Homeowner-Owned Grinder Pumps
  • 8,200 linear feet of 1.5” – 3” diameter LPS and appurtenances (cleanouts, air release valves, etc.)
  • 13,500 GPD Package WWTP consisting of a pre-aeration anoxic activated sludge process and control building

 

New Package Treatment Plant Serving the Kelly Crossroads
The new 13,500 GPD package wastewater treatment plant serving the Kelly Crossroads community

 

Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority Wins Governor’s Award for Local Government Excellence

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The Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority (WVSA) received the Governor’s Award for Local Government Excellence at a ceremony in Harrisburg on April 11, 2018. WVSA was honored for spearheading an innovative, regional approach to stormwater management that is saving municipalities in Luzerne County millions of dollars on their regulatory compliance and pollutant reduction efforts.  Herbert, Rowland & Grubic, Inc. (HRG) helped WVSA develop this approach.

 

Hundreds of communities across Pennsylvania are required to apply for a permit under the state Department of Environmental Protection’s MS4 program. This program is designed to manage stormwater runoff to prevent pollutants from entering our watersheds and reduce the risk of flooding. The latest round of permitting requires many communities to cut the level of pollutants they discharge to a particular watershed by as much as 10% over the next five years. The cost of producing and implementing these pollutant reduction plans can be too much for many local governments whose budgets are already stretched thin.

With that in mind, WVSA asked HRG to prepare a feasibility study focused on whether regional cooperation among all the municipalities in the county could lower the cost of compliance.  According to HRG’s study, the approach will indeed save participating municipalities more than $200 million over the next 20 years.  Some savings come from sharing the cost of planning and other fixed expenses, but the biggest savings come from the construction of best management practices meant to help the communities reach their pollutant reduction goals. Working together, the municipalities can construct fewer, more effective projects that do a better job of reducing pollution for a lower cost than municipalities would be able to achieve on their own.

 

 

Toby Creek Impoundment

How Municipalities in the Wyoming Valley are Cutting Stormwater Management Costs by up to 90%

Learn more about this excerpt from an article about WVSA’s stormwater program in The Authority magazine. The first in a series of articles on WVSA, this piece discusses the many ways regional cooperation will save municipalities money over the next five years.

 

ABOUT THE WYOMING VALLEY SANITARY AUTHORITY

The Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority (WVSA) has been providing wastewater treatment service for residents of Luzerne County since 1962. WVSA’s service area includes 35 municipalities from Harveys Lake to Pittston to Newport Township. Learn more about the authority and its services at www.wvsa.org

ABOUT HRG

Herbert, Rowland & Grubic, Inc. (HRG) is a nationally ranked design firm providing civil engineering, surveying, and environmental services. The firm was founded in Harrisburg in 1962 and has grown to employ more than 200 people in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.  For more information, please visit the website at www.hrg-inc.com.

Cooperation Prevents Pollution in the Wyoming Valley

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Toby Creek Impoundment

This article is an excerpt from the December issue of The Authority, a magazine produced by the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association (PMAA). It is the third in a series of 3 articles about an innovative approach to stormwater management and MS4 compliance being pioneered by 31 municipalities and the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority.

 

Thirty-one municipalities in Luzerne County are piloting a regional approach to MS4 compliance that may revolutionize the way Pennsylvania responds to the growing challenges posed by stormwater.

They have signed cooperative agreements with the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority, which will serve as MS4 permit coordinator for the entire region. In our previous posts, we discussed the many ways a regional partnership can lower the cost of stormwater management for municipalities and the ways it is benefitting the taxpayers.

In this post, we’ll discuss how:

Cooperation prevents pollution.

Stormwater doesn’t recognize municipal boundaries. Pollution can travel through a watershed across multiple borders.  Communities will be more effective at reducing pollution if they cut it off at the source, and that source may be in another municipality.  This requires local governments to work together.

The same is true for flooding. Municipalities can better protect properties downstream if they address the source of the flooding upstream – even if that source is in a neighboring community.

A coordinated, regional approach will be much more effective at solving watershed problems than a fragmented approach where methods used by one municipality may be at odds with those used in another.

In the Wyoming Valley, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has estimated local municipalities generate 39 million pounds of pollutants each year. These pollutants negatively impact local waterways, the Susquehanna River, and the Chesapeake Bay.

The regional approach being pioneered by the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority and its partners is projected to reduce this yearly pollutant load by 3.9 million pounds (or 10%).

The authority and its municipal partners will be implementing regional BMPS to accomplish this goal at a fraction of the cost they would’ve incurred if the municipalities were to go it alone.

 

 

The truth is: many municipalities are not able to meet the challenges stormwater brings on their own; the cost is too much for their budgets to bear. But they can reduce the cost – and make it manageable – if they share it with their neighbors through a regional approach to stormwater management like the one being pioneered in the Wyoming Valley.

By working together on a regional approach to MS4 compliance, municipalities there are estimated to save between 58% and 70% in capital costs over the next five years. They’ll save more than $200 million on operations, maintenance, and improvements over the next 20 years.

Cooperation saves money, benefits the taxpayer, and prevents pollution. Most importantly, it makes the seemingly impossible task of protecting our watersheds possible. We hear a lot these days about the challenges that face us, and there are many who are quick to say that the political climate or financial limitations prevent us from overcoming those challenges.  But the example being set in the Wyoming Valley reminds us that no challenge is too big if people work together to conquer it.

Jim Tomaine has more than 30 years of engineering experience. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from The Pennsylvania State University and a master’s degree in business administration from Wilkes University. He is the executive director of the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority and has been at WVSA for twenty seven years.  Prior to the WVSA, Mr. Tomaine worked in the private sector as a design engineer. He currently holds his A-1 Wastewater Treatment Plant Operators Certification in Pennsylvania and is also a registered professional engineer.

 

Adrienne Vicari is the financial services practice area leader at Herbert, Rowland & Grubic, Inc. (HRG). In this role, she has helped the firm provide strategic financial planning and grant administration services to numerous municipal and municipal authority clients. She is also serving as project manager for several projects involving the creation of stormwater authorities or the addition of stormwater to the charter of existing authorities throughout Pennsylvania.