Potter Township in Centre County was recently awared a $750,000 state grant through the Community Development Block Grant Program. The money will go towards funding a new sewage treatment plant in the village of Potters Mills. Dick Decker is the chairman of the township Board of Supervisors and said this money is crucial .
“We were happy about it because we didn’t know how we were going to proceed,” said Decker.
Since many residents in the village are retired, Decker said the grant was the only way to make this project happen.
“It’ll make it possible to make the monthly payments something that they can fit in their budget,” said Decker.
Kerry Tyson is an engineer for the project and also helped write up the grant. He said he is just excited to see the project finally move forward.
“It feels good to get all of the permits that we need so far in place. It feels good to get the D.E.E.P approval, and it feels good to get the financing. The key all along was getting the financing to make it an affordale project,” said Tyson.
Currently many of the residents have private wells and septic tanks. Officals say that creating a pulbic sewage system that is separate from people’s drinking water will reduce the risk of contamination.
“It’s to eliminate the groundwater contamination, the potential for groundwater contamination, and future groundwater contamination in this area,” said Tyson.
Decker said they have been working hard to get to this point, and he hopes that construction can move forward quickly.
“I would like to see us condense the construction cycle or period as much as we can so that by early 2019 I would guess, we should have a system that’s ready to operate,” said Decker.