Docket full for New Bremen in upcoming months, years
NEW BREMEN — A slew of projects are slated for the village of New Bremen in the upcoming months and years.
Village Administrator Brent Richter, who took over the position in November, spoke at Rotary Tuesday morning and gave a rundown of a number of projects that are getting underway.
Richter first mentioned the swimming pool which began leaking last summer and forced the pool to close periodically.
It was determined that were were six leaks in the piping that go from
the pump room out to the pool and those are being replaced.
Shinn Brothers, the company hired to replace the piping, has a permit application out to the Ohio Department of Health and they are awaiting to hear the approval of that to begin work.
“These are big 8-inch, 12-inch PVC lines that have frozen or cracked or broken from either the ground shifting, we’re not quite sure until we dig it up and find out,” said Richer. “The pipe is in the parking lot and we’re ready.
Richter then talked about the bike path that’s part of a Ohio Department of Natural Resources project.
“We’re going to pave the bike path from the canal down by the Y over to Walnut Street and kind of connect Walnut to the bike path,” said Richter. The village received a $245,000 grant to complete work on that.
There’s also a path by the yard waste facility that’s going to be paved and a crosswalk that will be implemented also as part of the project at the intersection of Klee Avenue and state Route 274.
“Also included in this is a crosswalk for the kids since the school moved out east,” said Richter. “They’ll be able to push the button and get flashing lights to cross. Choice One is working on that and the drawings are almost done. That’s going to bid in May or June of this year.”
The village received a $50,000 grant from ODNR for canal cleanup which will go from behind First National Bank down to Amsterdam Road.
Richter said the village recently put in a new sanitary line along state Route 66 for six houses that weren’t connected to the sewer system.
He said as solar companies have begun making their way into Auglaize County, council has begun drawing up a policy for the behind the meter generation.
“It’s really for the policy and the application process,” said Richter, “having rules and how that will hook up to village of New Bremen electric. [You] have to have a bidirectional meter so that the electric they use will get billed just like normal. If they put extra power back on the grid, then they’ll get a credit for that every month based on wholesale rate so we’re getting that passed.”
Looking ahead to next year and beyond, Richter said Jefferson Street is getting reconstruction done from state Route 274 to Klee Avenue with new water, sewer, gas and wastewater lines going in.
That will go out for bid in October and construction will begin in 2022.
Staying with state Route 274, Richter said ODOT will be completing a resurfacing project in 2024.
“We want to have all the infrastructure underneath the street up to date before they do that because we don’t want to have to replace a water line later on,” he said.
In 2023, Richter said Dayton Power and Light — now called AES Ohio — is planning on replacing the 69,000 volt line that runs from Amsterdam Road to St. Marys.
“That’s the line that’s been giving us fits. That’s the line that caused the outage the other week,” said Richter. “That line broke and shorted out. They are going to replace that in 2023.
“They know it’s getting old and it’s fragile and breaks a lot.”
Other projects he mentioned include:
• A new driveway in front of the fire station. “It’s kind of cracked and broken from heavy firetrucks going over it for years so we’re getting that concrete replaced with a new concrete,” said Richter.
• Replacing the filters at the water plant, as the filters are original to the plant which was built in the mid-1990s. “They’re getting less efficient so it’s time to replace those,” said Richter. “There’s four big filters and we’re working on that. We have the permit in to Ohio EPA to get that done so we awarded that to a company that does that for us.”
• Changes to the wastewater plant operation. “Every five years we get a new permit from the Ohio EPA. It came in March with a lot of changes to it,” said Richter. “They decreased the amount of ammonia and phosphorus that were put down the creek. And also they want to measure more metals in our waste. We had to hire a consultant to help us with that to help us determine what that means for the plant and the design. The deadline for that was April 1 and we got that extended to May 1 because of the complexity of it.”
• Resurfacing project on North Main Street.
• New blowers that blow air into the lagoons. “These are original to the plant from the 80s,” said Richter. “We were working that process of updating that with new blowers. Since this permit changed, we’re not quite sure how that’s going to change the design of the plant so we stopped working on those new blowers until we determine how that affects the plant.”