The Intergovernmental Stormwater Committee on Thursday awarded a contract to a York firm for streambank restoration on Brush Run within Sylvan Hills Golf Course.

Aquatic Resource Restoration Co. was the low bidder at $875,600.

The work at the golf course should reduce the flow of sediment into the stream by 90,000 to 100,000 pounds per year, helping the committee comply with requirements set by the state Department of Environmental Protection, in keeping with the federal Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4) initiative designed to reduce stormwater runoff pollution.

As with a larger project soon to begin on the Beaverdam Branch of the Juniata River in Hollidaysburg, the golf course work will involve removing “legacy sediment” deposited in impoundments made by dams in the earlier days of European settlement, for restoration of a more natural stream profile, according to Brian Shura of Stiffler McGraw.

Engineers have worked with golf course management over the last couple years to determine where and to what extent these operations can best occur without compromising the course, Shura said.

“Where the stream crosses the fairways, we limited what we did,” Shura said. “Where there is no fairway, we went wider.”

The golf course asked for the contractor to wait until mid-October to begin, to minimize loss of down time for players, Shura said.

The work should be completed in spring, Shura said.

It will occur over 1,800 linear feet.

LandStudies, a Lititz firm the committee has consulted on such projects, “speaks highly” of Aquatic Resource Restoration, Shura said.

The committee will pay for the project with a $500,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and “project” money in its stormwater fund.

Beaverdam project

Plum Contracting of Greensburg will begin work on Phase 1 of the Beaverdam Branch project in September, according to officials.

The committee awarded a $2.6 million contract to Plum for the Beaverdam project last month.

That work will take place along the 0.8-mile stretch from Plank Road to about a third of the way through Legion Park.

Sediment goals

The committee has been dealing with uncertainty about some of its longer-term obligations, as defined by the state Department of Environmental Protection permits under which it operates.

Part of the issue stems from three of the nine municipalities — Altoona, Logan Township and Antis Township — having “individual” permits, because portions of those municipalities are in the watershed of the Little Juniata River, which has a Total Maximum Daily Load for sediment, an MS4 pollutant.

TMDLs are assigned to streams that are labeled impaired for failing to meet water quality standards for desired uses like supporting aquatic life or recreation or providing drinking water, according to Shura and online sources.

The TMDL targets are designed to help bring the streams out of the impaired category.

DEP renewed the individual permits for Altoona, Logan and Antis in 2023 for five years — so they’ll expire in 2028 — but it “administratively extended” the general permits for the other municipalities to Sept. 30, 2026, which means that the expiration of the permits for one group doesn’t match the expiration of the permits for the others, Shura said.

The committee is looking to the state for further guidance in how to resolve the mismatch of permit cycles, according to Shura.

There are projects in the works that should easily get the committee as a whole into compliance with a sediment reduction goal set by the DEP when it issued five-year permits for all the members in 2018.

But an additional complication is forthcoming: the DEP plans to switch from a focus on reducing sediment to a focus on reducing the volume of water flowing into area streams, Shura said.

For the municipalities under the general permit, that will come to fruition when those permits come up for renewal in 2026.

Presumably, the other three have until 2028.

It’s not clear what sort of projects will be required to deal with volume reduction, although generally, that can be accomplished with infiltration and evaporation, Shura said.

Retention basin retrofits and bioretention facilities might be among projects that could be considered.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.