Mount Olive sewer grant approved
By Steve Herring
Published in News on July 28, 2014 1:46 PM
MOUNT OLIVE -- After hearing unofficially for days, the town of Mount Olive has finally been notified that its $1.5 million sewer infrastructure improvements grant has been approved.
Town officials earlier had learned that another $1.5 million grant, this one for water improvements, was not approved.
Both of the grant applications were through the federal Community Development Block Grant program.
The sewer grant will replace four lift stations on Franklin Street, County Road, Cleveland Drive and Church Street.
"This is great news," Town Manager Charles Brown said. "We currently have 11 projects either in progress, wrapping up or starting totaling $8.3 million."
The lift station project will complement another sewer project that the town has in the works.
Mount Olive currently has 13 lift stations.
Once work on the four included in the CD grant is completed, it would leave only two other lift stations that either haven't been rehabbed or replaced within the past few years.
The town has asked that those two lift stations, on Valley Road and Ridgecrest, be added to a $1.2 million loan/grant through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The main focus of that application is to make improvements to the sewer lift station at the corner of the Old Mount Olive Highway and Northeast Church Road.
It would upgrade the lift stations to include new pumps, generators and telemetry at those two sites.
The grant also would be used to increase the size of the force main to six inches in order to increase the station's capacity to a million gallons per day.
The main would run down the Old Mount Olive Highway, that becomes North Center Street, to just south of Park Avenue, where it would be dropped into a gravity sewer line that runs to the wastewater treatment plant.
The town is 60 days or less away from submitting the design to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In addition to force main work, the town hopes to purchase two pieces of sewer equipment in that funding request -- a sewer line jetter that will allow the town to clean its sewer lines.
The town also is asking for a camera system to allow it to video the sewer lines and pinpoint problems.
The town plans to reapply for the CD grant for the water improvements.
A public hearing on the water grant will be held Monday, Aug. 4, at 7 p.m. during the board's regular session.