Bids for the Mahanoy Business Park project will be opened and awarded next month.
"We plan to open bids on April 8, which is roughly a week, week and a half before our next board meeting. So our intent is to have a successful recommendation to award that contract at our April meeting," Patrick Caulfield, executive director of the Schuylkill County Municipal Authority, told board members Tuesday morning.
The $4 million project is funded through a loan of that amount from PennVEST, a state infrastructure financing program, and will pay for a 500,000-gallon water storage tank that will service the business park in Mahanoy and Ryan townships, as well as the village of Vulcan. It also includes 20,000 linear feet of 8-inch and 12-inch water lines.
Bids for the project were advertised March 1. A pre-bid meeting is scheduled for 1 p.m. March 25 at the municipal authority.
Caulfield said work at the site could start in June, although what will be done with the sewage generated by the business park has yet to be determined.
In other news, the proposal from the authority to provide supplemental operation and maintenance services for the borough water and wastewater systems by the Orwigsburg borough council was discussed.
The cost for the service is $1,850 per month for one year.
Amy Batdorf, authority assistant executive director, said the borough system is in good shape.
"It's a very viable system. I really think, overall, the system is in really great condition," she said.
The council voted March 12 to approve the proposal from the municipal authority. A formal agreement will be signed at a later date.
The council also discussed its strategic plan at the meeting.
Caulfied said the authority is looking at infrastructure, such as water tanks, that could need updating due to age.
He does not know how much money could be needed to update infrastructure, he said.
"It's a five-year plan. We'd like to tweak it and make it better," Franklin K. Schoeneman, board chairman, said after the meeting.
The plan will look at infrastructure, finance and organizational structure, he said.
The next regularly scheduled meeting is 10:15 a.m. April 15.