Lansford Borough Council will consider allocating $350,000 toward a joint sewer project to save millions in federal funding secured by the Coaldale-Lansford-Summit Hill Sewer Authority.

But it wants an agreement in place to protect the borough’s investment in the project, which will look for and correct stormwater infiltration into the sanitary sewer system.

Council asked Bill McMullen of ARRO Engineering to explain the project and need for the matching funds during its workshop meeting Tuesday night.

ARRO serves as the engineer for both the authority and the borough. The firm is also the borough engineer for Summit Hill, which last month agreed to commit its share of the funding toward the project.

The authority is asking all three municipalities — Lansford, Coaldale and Summit Hill — to contribute $350,000 toward the project to save a $2.5 million federal grant, which sunsets Sept. 30, 2026.

The authority had asked for a commitment from the three municipalities by the end of November to get the project out to bid and underway as quickly as possible.

However, neither Lansford nor Coaldale agreed to commit the funds last month, and Lansford sought more information from ARRO.

McMullen explained that municipalities may be aware of a $1.4 million grant that the authority sought to line sewer pipes to stop infiltration that all three municipalities would share.

The authority learned that it could only use those funds on authority-owned facilities, not the infrastructure owned by the boroughs, he said. The authority is now using that to line its interceptor, because that funding would also be lost, according to McMullen.

The authority also applied for $2.5 million in federal funding for a vortex, which separates solids at the sewage treatment plant to improve capacity, McMullen said.

The state Department of Environmental Protection, however, did not approve the upgrade, because it’s not a permanent solution and may need to be removed, he said.

The authority also does not have an Act 537 sewage treatment plan, as this planning and engineering module must be done by the municipalities, McMullen said.

“It’s not a CLSH thing, it’s a municipality thing,” he said.

The authority also doesn’t have a Water Quality Management Part Two permit, which is needed to improve capacity at the plant, McMullen said.

Because of those three factors, the authority can’t move forward with the vortex project and is seeking a project to use the federal funding before it expires to benefit the overall system, he explained.

That project would be cleaning, televising and lining sewer lines in the system, which are owned by the municipalities, McMullen said. The project would identify what needs to be done to improve the overall system, he said.

“So the $350,000 is doing something that has to be done eventually,” McMullen said.

They would be looking at lining only 8-inch, 10-inch and 12-inch sewer lines, and if they find a line needs to be replaced, it can’t be done as part of this project because there isn’t enough time, he said.

Both council members and residents questioned what was done and not done in the past, and where the stormwater infiltration might be and in which municipality.

McMullen said that infiltration is happening in all three boroughs.

“No one is exempt,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what was done in the past. I want to move forward. When I sat down with DEP for a meeting, that first half hour was you guys didn’t do anything for 20 years.”

The authority will have to return any unused portion of the $2.5 million federal grant, if not used by the end of September, McMullen said. That September deadline is driving this project, which would total $3.9 million with municipality and authority matches, he said.

McMullen believes that he can get another state agency, the Department of Community and Economic Development, to OK this project with the aid of state Sen. id Argall’s office, which supported the original project, if all three boroughs commit the matching funds.

One of the issues was the ownership of the sewer the lines, which Lansford Borough Council President Bruce Markovich mentioned as an issue if the authority is overseeing the project.

Markovich wanted to see a draft agreement to protect the borough’s investment in the project before committing the funding. He also asked about how Summit Hill approved the funding without clear parameters.

Summit Hill Councilman Joe Weber, who attended Lansford’s meeting, said his council did commit the funding toward the project, but did so with a general motion. Weber said that he sees the use of the grant with matching funding is giving the borough engineering for a project at “50-cents on the dollar.”

Markovich wanted to know if an agreement could be drafted before council’s next meeting, and McMullen didn’t believe it could. Markovich suggested a special meeting to approve an agreement.

McMullen also pointed out that the borough could agree to commit the $350,000 in funding to move the project forward at its meeting next week, contingent upon the agreement.

Markovich said that they could also do that.