Oct. 23--INDIANA -- The Indiana County commissioners have approved bids for work on a project that will expand the Blairsville Municipal Authority sewage treatment plant.

At a special meeting Wednesday, the commissioners approved the following contracts: General/mechanical to Galway Bay Corporation, Mount Braddock, for $4,979,000; HVAC to MARC-Service, Inc., Windber, for $149,287.00; and electrical to Bronder Technical Services, Inc., Butler, for $1,397,000.

The Blairsville Municipal Authority also approved those contract awards at an Oct. 19 special meeting.

After the project is finished, the plant capacity will increase from 900,000 gallons per day to 1,353,000 gallons per day. The increase is needed to accommodate growth along the Route 22 corridor in Burrell Township.

"This is really a monumental agreement, given the status of what needs to be done in the southern part of Indiana County," commissioner Rod Ruddock said. "We're just as pleased as we can be."

Ruddock said the increase in sewage capacity should be a benefit to the Corporate Campus business park in Burrell Township, along with residential developments in the area that have slowed in growth because of the sewage concerns.

Indiana County Office of Planning and Development executive director Byron Stauffer said county officials had to do some serious number crunching in order to make sure recent projects in that area didn't overload the plant's current capacity.

"We were really starting to sweat bullets toward the last couple of projects whether or not we had that capacity in place," he said.

The county has been granted $2,488,956 of funding from the Penn Works program toward the project. The Blairsville Municipal Authority (BMA) has been awarded a $10,455,044 grant as well as a $3 million PennVest loan in order to fund the project.

In addition to the plant improvements, 13,625 feet of new sanitary sewers will be installed in Blairsville to eliminate 13 combined sewer overflows.

Currently, a rainy day in Blairsville causes these combined sewer overflows to discharge sewage into the Conemaugh River, which had been permitted by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

"With this project, we will no longer be permitted by DEP to discharge sewage into the Conemaugh," BMA executive director Ron Hood said, "which will clean up the Conemaugh."

The project is set to begin by Nov. 22 and is expected to be wrapped up by the end of 2010.

County officials thanked the Burrell Township supervisors, Blairsville Borough Council and state Sen. Don White for their cooperation in the project.

The commissioners granted an extension to BMA for the repayment of a $150,000 Infrastructure Revolving Loan Fund (IRLF) loan until the initial PennVest program reimbursement is received for the plant expansion project.

Repayment of the loan would've been due Sunday, but the extension gives BMA until 10 days after the initial PennVest money is received or no later than Jan. 31, 2010 -- whichever is the earliest.

Also at Wednesday's special meeting, the commissioners approved a revised grant offer request to the Pennsylvania Bureau of Aviation for the third phase of the Jimmy Stewart Airport runway extension project.

The commissioners will request a grant of $6,635,959.50 to allow the contractor to complete the site preparation and earth work on a 12-hour work schedule. It also includes additional off-site wetland mitigation work, which was not mentioned in the first grant request approved at the last meeting.

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