EATON — The Preble County Board of Commissioners brought Preble County Sanitary Landfill Assistant Manager Jeff Rogers into their meeting on Monday, Oct. 29, to bring him up to speed on Sewer District Six.

The board wanted to fill him in on the project, since Bob Kohnen left the office of Sanitary Engineer.

Commissioner Chris Day began by sharing that Kurtis Strickland with Ohio Rural Community Assistance Program (RCAP) submitted an application with the Army Corps of Engineers for the project sometime in the past. Preble County has been awarded a Section 594 Grant in the amount of approximately $1.052 million.

Officials came in for a meeting a few months ago and indicated that those funds, minus administrative fee, can be used for design only, as the SD6 project is not far enough to consider implementation at this point.

“Do we want to use that money to pay CDM Smith on the front end here? I think we are all in agreement, that is a good spend of those dollars. We need to get a conference call and get everybody connected to try and push this thing forward,” Commission President Chris Day said. “Since Bob [Kohnen] is gone and [Jeff Rogers] is taking care of the sewage side of things — tag you’re it. You might as well get involved in this, because it was getting to the point where you were going to have to get involved anyways.”

Day added, the Army Corps of Engineers had been requesting an answer to their proposal. So the commissioners scheduled a conference call for later in the day with all parties involved.

“I think that is the direction we should go and the direction we were indicating at the last meeting,” Commissioner Denise Robertson said. “So, the Army Corps needs and answer to do what? Move forward with an agreement?”

Deputy Clerk Julie Swisher noted, they need to know if Preble County will move forward with design only or design and construction.

Robertson replied, they had discussed design only, as the funds provided would not “touch” construction.

“We don’t even know if construction is going to happen,” Commission Rodney Creech said.

The commissioners are still awaiting information — including a timeline — from CDM Smith. The next step will be to define the scope of the project.