By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM – The village will soon receive $507,500 to revamp aging water and storm sewers n the Leroy and Pleasant street area to prevent the kind of flooding that occurred in September 2010.

The money, originally proposed as a $600,000 grant from the Small Cities Community Development Block Grant program, is part of the 2015 North Country Regional Economic Development Council proposal, funding for which was announced Thursday along with the rest of the billions of dollars in grants statewide.

The money was requested to clear entanglements between the old “crosstown drain” canal, built in the early 1900s, and subsequent water and sewer lines put in and around the canal.

There are water and sewer lines that “either cross it or are in the canal creating obstructions for debris that accumulate” and slow the drain flow, said Potsdam Village Administrator Everett Basford. In addition the lines themselves are exposed to damage and degradation.

The matter became a critical one for residents around Leroy, Broad, Waverly, Pleasant and Garden streets in September 2010 when heavy rain overwhelmed the canal and caused significant flooding there. Elements of the Potsdam and Parishville fire departments took part in pumping the water out of basements. Residents said at the time that was not the first time the canal had not carried off storm water fast enough to prevent road and house flooding.

The canal, originally designed to carry water from farm fields around Lawrence Avenue through the village to the Raquette River, was examined in 2011 with a video camera that revealed sediment and debris accumulation restricting flow. Measures were taken upstream of the canal at the time to try to forestall some future sediment deposition.

Basford said two 18-inch sewer lines and one 12-inch water line will have to be moved.

To completely solve the problem, Basford said, the water and sewer lines would be removed from the canal and some of pumps and cleanup access points installed to help move the water along, which the grant would in part cover, “and then go back and address the old canal itself.”

The next step after Thursday’s announcement of the award is to “wait for paperwork to come from Albany,” which the village will complete, “and once the paperwork is returned we will have two years to complete the entire project,” Basford said.

Before work can start, there will be engineering consultants’ reports, specifications and designs to obtain, and then the village will have to solicit and examine bids and then accept one or more of them.

“We’d have to really get moving on it,” and perhaps try to get a start on the work toward the end of summer 2016, Basford said.

In the original $600,000 grant proposal for CDBG funds, the plan included matching that with $140,000 from the village, mainly from in-kind labor and materials through the village Department of Public Works.