RICHLAND COUNTY — Richland County commissioners spent more than $23 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds over the past five years.
County administrator Andrew Keller singled out one specific project on Tuesday that many residents may never physically notice, despite the fact it took four years to accomplish.
His remarks came during a “virtual ribbon cutting” marking the successful completion of the $4.4 million sanitary sanitary sewer overhaul along the Ohio 97 corridor near Interstate 71, clearing the way for new commercial and residential growth in southern Richland County.
“This is probably our least visible ARPA investment, yet the most impactful,” Keller said. “Congratulations to the village and the residents. It’s going to return dividends, I think, for years to come.”
Officials gathered during a Richland County Board of Commissioners meeting to mark the completion of the project, which replaced deteriorating 1970s-era utility lines and lift stations serving the village of Bellville, businesses and residents near the highway interchange.
It’s a project four years in the making. In 2022, commissioners approved a “significant” sanitary sewer infrastructure proposal that will open the door to additional economic development in Bellville.
(Below is a PDF from a presentation made by Patrick Schwan from Richland Engineering to the Richland County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday.)
The actual agreement approved by commissioners was an addendum to a 1981 deal between Richland County and the village that had the county-owned sanitary sewer system handling the sites near the interstate and sending it through the village’s wastewater treatment facilities.
The area was not incorporated into the village until 1995.
The plan called for the sewage system, built by Richland County in 1980, to be improved and then transferred to the village’s control. Under federal ARPA guidelines, contracts for any projects needed to be appropriated by the end of 2024 and the work completed by the end of 2026.
Keller praised the willingness of village officials, including Mayor Teri Brenkus, to take ownership of the system once work was done.
“It was the village’s willingness in 2022 to take ownership of sewer assets that made this project possible,” Keller said.
“It also corrects an issue with varying user rates within the village, so now the rates for the users in this I-71 corridor will coincide with the rates that the rest of the village pays,” he said.
“I’m pumped,” Keller said, a remark that elicited laughs and groans across the room over a lift-station pun.
The endeavor represents a strategic investment to support regional development, according to Commissioner Cliff Mears.
“This is more than lines and lift stations,” Mears said. “It’s a strategic investment in Richland County’s future to support development for years to come.
“What’s more exciting than wastewater?” he said with a laugh.
When the project was conceived in 2022, Commissioner Darrell Banks, the former mayor of Bellville, said it would be the only way to modernize the corridor and safely transition ownership and rate structures directly to Bellville.
The project spanned roughly three miles of infrastructure.
Work included lining aging clay pipes installed decades ago and laying new force main along Ohio 97 to Myers Avenue.
It also included the installation of two elevated lift stations designed to withstand area floodwaters, according to Patrick Schwan, senior engineering manager and principal engineer with Richland Engineering Ltd., now part of The Mannik & Smith Group.
A force main is a pressurized sanitary sewer pipeline that uses mechanical pumps or compressors from a lift station or pump station to convey wastewater uphill, across flat terrain or over physical barriers
Schwan said the previous infrastructure had far exceeded its useful life.
The newly installed pump stations — situated at Bellville-Johnsville and Kochheiser roads — were built on elevated platforms with support piers due to high groundwater and frequent flooding in the basin.
The stations feature pumps manufactured locally by Gorman-Rupp, as well as backup generators to prevent system overflows during electrical outages. Crestline-based Driven Excavating served as the project’s prime contractor.
“Big things don’t happen quick and complex things don’t happen quick,” Schwan said, calling the finished product a “golden nugget” for the community.
There were some bumps along the way. When the contract was awarded in October 2024, initial engineering timelines targeting substantial completion by April 2026.
However, high groundwater levels, dewatering challenges along the flood-prone Clear Fork basin and intricate coordination across multiple utility easements along Ohio 97 slowed progress.
In late April 2026, county commissioners formally granted a five-month extension, pushing the project’s hard completion deadline back to Sept. 18.
Schwan reassured commissioners at the time that all major equipment had already been delivered and approved, explaining that remaining work was down to “literally physical labor” that required extra care to execute properly.
The upgrades position the interchange to handle significantly more flow as anticipated economic activity accelerates.
Brenkus said the reliable system is already supporting immediate developments, including a new Holiday Inn Express and a regional YMCA sports complex, which recently completed its first phase featuring a regulation soccer field.
Brenkus also welcomed the end of persistent sewer odors that long plagued neighborhoods near the old Myers Avenue manhole.
“Our village has been blessed,” Brenkus said, adding that residents will no longer have to endure escaping sewer gas. “The whole village will never be referred to as ‘Stinkville’ again.”
Both Brenkus and county leaders singled out Amanda Miller, the county’s wastewater treatment director, for her hands-on leadership throughout the multiyear effort.
“The person I want to thank the most has got to be Amanda,” Mears said, praising her for steering the complex project while managing day-to-day operations at the wastewater plant.
“It’s been a lot of hours and a lot of conversations, but you’re just amazing,” he told her.
Miller said there were still a few remaining administrative steps to complete the handover of the system to the village.
“A few more hoops to jump through in order to transition the 28 customers and things like that. I believe we’ll have everything in place, hopefully, so that this is the best Christmas present ever to give to them,” she said.
