Peters Township Council approves measures toward new high school
Build it, and they will flush.
Construction of a new Peters Township High School stands to increase the load on the sewer line serving the area including the former Rolling Hills Country Club property, where a municipal park is planned in addition to the educational facility.
To handle the additional capacity, township council on Feb. 26 approved an agreement with Peters Township Sanitary Authority and the school district to make upgrades to the Stonehenge trunk sewer. The school district took similar action earlier in the month.
The cost of the project is to be shared among the entities, with the district contributing 57 percent; the sanitary authority, 33 percent; and the township, 10 percent.
“We don’t know for sure what this project is going to cost yet,” township manager Paul Lauer told council. “It’s still in the process of being engineered. The estimates are as high as $700,000.”
The sanitary authority has applied to the state Department of Community and Economic Development for a grant covering small sewer projects.
“I can tell you they had other projects in the queue,” Lauer said about DCED officials, “but they recognize the nature for this and the need for it in the community.”
Usually, developers are responsible for all costs associated with improvements to sewer lines, but Lauer spoke with sanitary authority manager Enoch Jenkins about the different circumstances of the Stonehenge project.
“This is a public project in which the community is invested, both in terms of the school district’s future high school as well as the future park,” he said.
Jim Berquist, council chairman, commended Lauer and others for coming up with a way to share the cost.
“I think it’s commendable that the various organizations within the township tried to come up with an agreement that’s fair and equitable for all,” he said.
Council also advanced the new high school’s cause by approving a variance to the township’s grading ordinance to accommodate retaining walls that exceed the maximum regulated height of six feet.
Plans call for two such walls, one in the southwestern section of the property, near the intersection of East McMurray and Center Church roads.
“It’s two feet,” Lauer said about the height above the maximum, “over a fairly short section, and it faces in toward the building as opposed to out. So I don’t think that represents a tremendous departure, and it’s one we shouldn’t be that concerned about.”
The other wall is planned at 16.5 feet tall, helping to accommodate a service road.
“It is passing between two areas that have been delineated as wetlands. To be able to avoid encroachment onto that, they are proposing that there be a substantial wall” extending for 55 feet, Lauer explained.
Christopher Remley, project manager with Civil & Environmental Consultants Inc., provided further elucidation.
“The reason we need the wall is the natural resources there that we’re protecting,” he said. “Otherwise, we’d just grade that down and have a normal slope. There would be no wall.”
Its proposed placement is to the west of the school’s student parking lot.
“They’re trying to maximize the amount of stalls that they’re going to have for the students,” Remley said.
The road would not be for general traffic, he told council, and has the general purpose of providing access to practice fields to the south of the school building.