YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – The Ohio EPA is considering funding a project in Youngstown that would change the city’s sewer systems, improve a parking lot, modify the Covelli Centre Pond and remove contaminated materials.
The funding would be available through the Water Pollution Control Loan Fund program and would help Youngstown in its plan to reroute, create and abandon some of the city’s current sewer systems.
The city’s long-term plan is to connect a new sanitary sewer network to a future, proposed tunnel under the Mahoning River and its wastewater treatment plant.
It would then abandon the temporary connection.
The on-going project would abandon about 2550 lineal feet of existing sanitary sewers and manholes.
There would also be site restoration.
The estimated cost of this related project is $16.3 million.
It is scheduled to be designed by spring 2020 and constructed by fall 2025.
The public has through August 27 to review the assessment and provide comments.
The assessment is available here.

Federal Judge: Environmental Law was Broken in Rushed Review of Dakota Access Pipeline.
The Army Corps of Engineers, acting under directions from the Trump administration, violated the law when it approved the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) on February 8.
That’s according to a ruling issued by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on June 14―two weeks after Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind DAPL, announced that the pipeline was fully operational.
According to Boasberg’s 91-page decision, the Corps “failed to adequately consider the impacts of an oil spill on Standing Rock’s fishing and hunting rights and on environmental justice.” “This is a major victory for the Tribe and we commend the courts for upholding the law and doing the right thing,” said Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault in a statement.
(Image: Wikipedia) The Standing Rock tribe initially argued that the clearing of land for the pipeline right-of-way would destroy sites of historical and religious importance to the Lakota people and so would violate the National Historic Preservation Act.
The Cheyenne River tribe contended that the flow of oil in the pipeline would desecrate the sacred waters of the Missouri River and so violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Judge Boasberg ruled against the tribes in both cases.
In this third and most recent attempt, the Standing Rock tribe argued that the Corps’ decision to permit the pipeline without conducting an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—and this time the Court agreed, at least in part.
In doing so, Judge Boasberg ruled, the Corps was largely within the law.
Two, the Corps did not adequately address expert scientific criticisms of the agency’s oil spill risk analysis.

Dakota Access Pipeline ruling favoring Standing Rock Sioux a victory, but the battle is not over.
What happened at Standing Rock is a movement, and you don’t see the benefits of a movement until way later.” ~David Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, addressing court ruling ++ ++ ++ The 91-page decision issued Wednesday by a federal court ruling against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for violating the law with an inadequate environmental review of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline garnered some long-delayed activist hurrahs this week.
Most of that run is built on private land.
While this is clearly a major win for the tribe, the details show the decision to be a mixed victory.
For one thing, despite saying the Corps failed to follow the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in granting an easement under Lake Oahe, he did not tell Energy Transfer Partners, the builder, to shut off the oil that has been flowing through the pipeline for more than two weeks.
The judge also ruled against the tribe on other issues.
Boasberg did not say one way or another whether the Corps’ had made the wrong decision in granting the easement, only that it had failed to cover ground NEPA requires to be reviewed before making a decision.
We hope this decision leads to the stoppage of oil flowing in the Bakken crude oil pipeline as a permanent remedy to protecting the drinking water of the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux Nations.
We will continue to support any and all efforts to divest from fossil fuels and stop the Dakota Access Pipeline once and for all.” Although the pipeline does not cross reservation land, it has been installed on ancestral Sioux territory.
He doesn’t see the cost in the future, he just sees the dollars gained today.” That, sadly, is not something only Donald Trump does.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ruled that the Trump administration failed to follow proper environmental procedures when it granted approval to the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline project.
It’s a legal victory for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and environmentalists, who protested for months against the pipeline.
The tribe fears that the pipeline, which crosses the Missouri River just upstream of their reservation, could contaminate their drinking water and sacred lands.
This ruling does not order a halt to pipeline operations.
But it opens the door to that possibility.
The judge writes that the standard remedy in this situation would be to vacate the pipeline’s permits and easement, thereby halting pipeline operations until the Army Corps is in compliance with environmental procedures.
We applaud the courts for protecting our laws and regulations from undue political influence and will ask the Court to shut down pipeline operations immediately."
As we have previously reported, "during President Trump’s first month in office, he reversed a decision by the Obama administration and called on the Army to expedite the approval process for the section of the pipeline that had not yet been built."
Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline company, has not commented on Wednesday’s ruling.
The first argued that "the grading and clearing of land for the pipeline threatened sites of cultural and historical significance," while the second contended that the oil in the pipeline under a lake significant to the tribe "would desecrate sacred waters and make it impossible for the Tribes to freely exercise their religious beliefs."