West Penn and Walker townships continue to await the completion of an administratively complete Act 537 sewage facility plan.

Bill Varano, co-chairman of the West Penn/Walker Township Joint Sewer Committee, informed West Penn Township supervisors at its meeting Monday morning of a letter from Rettew Associates Inc.

Varano said that Rettew has a meeting early next week to discuss what they found and to develop their work plan and kick off the completion of an administratively complete Act 537 Plan for both West Penn and Walker townships.

“We need to develop the plan the way we need it to be,” Varano said. “The plan we’re going to put together is what we want.”

Supervisor Timothy Houser asked if it was known how many houses had functioning systems and how many do not.

Varano said there are under 30 that are suspected of malfunctioning between both townships.

Board Chairman Tony Prudenti requested to have township sewage enforcement officer Bill Brior attend the township’s next meeting to discuss the matter further.

Houser said, “I don’t want to go into a $2 or $3 million project for 30 homes.”

In December, West Penn and Walker Township officials met with the Department of Environmental Protection at its Northeast Regional Office in Wilkes-Barre over their previously submitted Act 537 sewage facility plan.

Both townships previously adopted resolutions for their revised Act 537 sewage facilities plan.

In November, Brian Book, service area director of Rettew Associates Inc., met with West Penn Township supervisors during a meeting at the West Penn Fire Company to review the status of the Act 537 plan and to prepare a meeting with DEP, which has offered to meet with representatives of both West Penn and Walker in their Northeast Regional Office.

Book said at that time DEP had issues that the resolutions were imprecise in their implementation language; the resolutions did not include the signed and embossed originals (three for each township); the plan did not incorporate soil testing of the community on-lot disposal system solutions; and the methods used to assemble the plan were confusing, made more so because the three-ring binders came apart in shipping. This led to questions about the appropriate approvals and comment periods.

One of the requirements of the plan per DEP is that the township has an on-lot septic maintenance ordinance in place.

The preferred plan is an on-lot disposal system because there are no big infrastructure costs.

It was previously stated that DEP wants a solution presented in the plan for every user. If there are any users that cannot do on-lot systems, they have to have access to a community system.