The North Warren Municipal Authority received a $4.25 million loan Wednesday for its wastewater treatment system project.

Authority officials are hoping that loan more than covers the cost of the upgrades.

Sen. Scott Hutchinson (R-21st) announced the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority (PennVEST) low-interest loan.

The dollars will be used for “substantial upgrades and improvements to its wastewater treatment plant,” Hutchinson said. “The planned improvements will replace equipment that is nearly 60 years old.”

According to System Manager Rusty Van Epps, the renovation of the plant, formerly the Warren State Hospital plant, could be complete next summer.

“A lot of the structures of the system are roughly 60 years old,” Van Epps said. “Specifically, we are going to renovate the headworks. The headworks is the portion of the facility that receives the raw wastewater.”

“We are going to install screening devices that take out the debris — things that don’t break down — and get that stuff out of the waste stream,” he said.

One of the items causing significant problems in North Warren and nationwide is flushable wipes, he said.

“They cause huge problems. They don’t break down,” Van Epps said. “You grind them up, they recombine.”

“We’ll screen that kind of stuff right off the top,” he said.

“The digester’s worn out,” he said. “The pumps are worn out. They’ve served their purpose very well.”

The plant will move from an anaerobic digester to an aerobic digester. “We’re going to put air diffusers in there and convert it,” he said. “To continue to use the anaerobic system we would have had to have replace a lot more equipment.”

The new system “will give us additional holding space for our sludge in the winter,” he said.

The reeds that help process sludge are dormant in the winter. The new digester will allow for continued digesting until sludge can be placed on the reed beds, he said.

“There are a number of smaller renovations that are going on, upgrading other smaller units, doing some work inside the control building,” he said.

The dollars arrived too late to help with some of the work. “We took the sludge pump portion of the project out and paid for those pumps ourselves,” Van Epps said. “The current sludge pumps were getting to a critical point” and the authority was not comfortable waiting to see if the loan dollars would come through.

The authority will now move forward with bidding the project, he said.

Van Epps said the authority expects the project to cost less than the full loan amount.

He does not expect the repayment of the loan or the project itself to cause a rate increase.

“I don’t anticipate raising of rates as a direct result of this,” he said. “We raise the rates periodically. We’ve been advised by our auditors — bump the rates every few years, stay ahead of the increase in costs of everything.”

There will not be any interruption of service due to the project, he said. “Residents won’t notice.”