Lehighton borough officials believe addressing its inflow and infiltration matters with regard to its sanitary sewer system could yield benefits in time.

Councilman Steven Hawk said at Monday’s borough council meeting that he, along with Councilwoman Autumn Abelovsky and borough Manager Dane DeWire met with the Central Carbon Municipal Authority concerning the borough’s Inflow & Infiltration issues.

Hawk said that a lot of the infiltration coming into the plant is from the borough, which is a major concern.

“It really makes a lot of good sense to try to fix these problems,” Hawk said. “We need to take care of and get after it really hard.

“It’s a serious problem, and (it’s) in the taxpayers’ best interest to attack it pretty hard.”

DeWire agreed and added, “I think it’s in our best interests.”

Borough engineer Vanessa Nedrick said “there’s a lot of terracotta in the system.”

Nedrick said there are two areas in the borough, zone 3 and zone 6, which provide 80% of the I&I the borough has.

“You take care of those two zones, you’re taking care of 80% of it,” Nedrick said.

DeWire said addressing the situation could potentially save the borough thousands of dollars per month if it addresses the worst parts of the system.

Nedrick announced at last month’s borough council meeting that the borough received the H20 Pennsylvania Water Supply, Sanitary Sewer and Stormwater Projects grant for $611,245.

Nedrick told council the grant can be used for inflow and infiltration abatement work throughout the borough.

She said at that time she believes the borough has three years to spend the grant.

Nedrick said in March there were two drainage areas in the older portions downtown that have about 80% flow infiltration. She said at that time there was a 50% grant match.

Former borough Manager Steve Travers said at that time the match portion was from the borough’s ARPA funds.

Travers previously said the study broke it up into seven drainage areas, and that if the borough were to get the grant and use ARPA funds, it would take care of two drainage areas.

He said the grant would save the borough money so it could add a smaller project, possibly a third drainage area.