The agreement between the city of Wooster and Wayne County that will allow the county to close the county’s largest sewer plant has been formally approved by Wooster City Council.

During their late March meeting, members of council voted unanimously to accept the terms and conditions of an agreement under which Hillcrest area residents will be served by the city with sanitary sewer services.

According to David Silvestri, city council public utilities committee chair, there are a number of properties that sit outside the Wooster city limits whose sanitary sewer needs are currently being served by the county via “a small package plant out there that does preliminary and small scale pretreatment of sewer waste.

“Just looking at numbers and looking at options if the county were to try to upgrade that – and it doesn’t meet the current quality standards as it is – it would cost them over $1 million to do so. Being as close as they are to the city of Wooster, the best option, and the option that makes the most sense to them, is to come about 475 feet and connect into our sewer system,” said Silvestri.

The city’s existing sewer plant has more than enough capacity to accept the small additional load from the Hillcrest area residents.

“It’s great that we’ve put some resources into our sewer plant so we can easily handle the small additional load from that residential area,” said Silvestri.

He noted that the county will bear all the costs associated with installing the line necessary to connect the Hillcrest plant into the city’s existing sewer system.

Wooster Mayor Bob Breneman said that he does not expect the city to incur any additional costs from accepting waste from the Hillcrest plant.

“This is a straight meter situation. We will be putting a master meter at the Hillcrest plant. Everything on the upstream side or the county side is their responsibility. We have no responsibility for that. It starts at the meter for us and comes in 478 feet into our system and that’s where we take over responsibility,” said Breneman.

“They are doing all connections at their cost, so once it’s tied into the system we’ll be taking an additional load, but we are also being paid for that load, so it should increase the net income to the city anywhere from $40,000 to $70,000,” said Breneman.

It’s “all positive for the city of Wooster,” Silvestri said.

“We’ve got to run the (sewer) plant anyway, and this is just a small increase in the load that we will be compensated for,” he added.

Councilman Jon Ansel offered his “compliments to the city administration for working a win/win scenario.

“It’s good to see two administrative political entities work together toward a common, mutually beneficial goal, versus having them have to spend taxpayer dollars on those upgrades out of the county’s coffers,” said Ansel.

The Wayne County commissioners approved the memorandum of understanding with the city in mid March.

In order to move forward with construction on the $700,000 project, the county will first need to be successful in its bid to obtain Ohio Public Works Commission funding for the construction of the line and a lift station in the Hillcrest area.

Assuming funding is available, construction is set to get under way sometime after July of 2012.