Commissioners OK EPA filing for Bellville sewer system improvement project
A multi-million dollar project to upgrade the sewer system infrastructure that will support future development at the Ohio 97/I-71 interchange in Bellville is continuing to move forward. The Richland County commissioners on Tuesday gave Wastewater Director Amanda Miller the OK to file conceptual plans with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for a permit to install upgrades to the county sewer system in the Bellville area that include new lift stations on Bellville-Johnsville and Kochheiser Roads.
Miller told the board that plans for Kochheiser Road include a lift station that will handle a flow of up to 20,000 gallons per day, a 6-inch force line, an 8-inch diameter wet well and a backup power generator. The Bellville-Johnsville Road upgrade includes an 85,000-gallon per day lift station that meets a treatment agreement with Bellville, installation of a new 8-inch force line from Bellville-Johnsville to Myers Avenue in Bellville, a 14-inch diameter wet well and a backup diesel generator.
“Ultimately this design has been put together so it can eventually be upgraded to a future flow of 300,000 gallons a day as it develops down there,” Miller said.
Plans also call for lining a total of 12,590 feet of existing vitrified clay sewer line and constructing a platform for the new Bellville-Johnsville lift station to keep it above potential flood waters in the area.
“I don’t expect this to be the final, end-all plan. I do expect comments from the EPA as we are trying to make this futuristic and be upgradable with a larger force main in place for future growth,” Miller said.
Miller said the upgrades will allow the system to handle the new soccer complex being planned by the YMCA of North Central Ohio for the interchange area as well as a new hotel reportedly being planned there and potential future residential development.
Miller expects the EPA to take 30 to 45 days to review the application. Officials hope to have final design plans completed and the project bid out in early summer.
The estimated cost for the upgrades currently is around $5 million with funding to come from the county’s American Rescue Plan Act allocation. Once the project is completed, the upgrades will be turned over to the village.
New visitors guide debuted
Commissioners also got their first look Tuesday at the 2024 Richland County Visitors’ Guide, which was formally unveiled by Destination Mansfield-Richland County President Lee Tasseff. The guide is the third to fully feature the local brand “Richland County – A Family of Communities” and the fourth lifestyle magazine-type version.
Tasseff said the cover of the guide features Andy and Red, the main characters in the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” which was filmed at the old Mansfield Reformatory and other area locations.
“As we’ve done in the past, whatever we put on the cover makes it into a majority of our advertising or in this case it hits billboards that you’ve seen on [U.S.] 30 and [Interstate] 71,” Tasseff said. “Most everything we’re doing is Shawshank-themed because it’s the 30th anniversary of the movie so we’re doing a feature on that.”
Tasseff said there will be a main event Aug. 9-11 that will include actors and crew from the movie and will promote the Shawshank Trail that features sites where the movie was filmed. He said there will be opportunities for people to meet the crew and possibly some actors and an event at the Renaissance Theater, adding that how event activities will be designed will depend on who comes in.
”We’ve secured a lot of actors but not everybody we want to go after,” Tasseff said. “Once we get sufficient numbers or a certain segment of that actor group then we’ll go public.”
Tasseff also said that officials plan to have a session at the Reformatory to film some documentary footage on the movie that will not be open to the public.
Regarding the rest of the visitor’s guide, Tasseff said it includes three new profiles on “transplants" — people who have chosen to come to or move back to Mansfield to live — along with features on activities that give the guide its magazine look and QR codes to lead people to specific destinations. He also said the guide has “incredible” pictures, including an aerial photo of the crowd at the INKcarceration tattoo and music festival at the Reformatory.
“It blows peoples’ minds that something like that can happen in a smaller or medium-sized town in the Midwest, but it can, and we’ve got something that people want to come and see,” he said. “Our job is to put as much out there as possible so people have a really good idea of what they want to do when they get here as well as before they get here.”
Tasseff pointed out that the guide was particularly helpful for people who came to Mansfield and Richland County on Monday to view the solar eclipse. He said 80,000 copies of the visitor’s guide are being distributed at Ohio Department of Transportation information centers, local attractions and restaurants, city halls and the area Amish country with an emphasis on more local distribution.
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Commissioners OK Bellville sewer project filing, view visitors guide
