Sharon sanitation authority hopes applying for state grant funds could help reduce the amount of debt incurred from building the new, $45 million sewer plant.

Members Thursday voted to have Youngstown engineering firm MS Consultants apply for $20 million through the H20 PA plan, which will provide $750 million for water, sewer and other infrastructure projects in Pennsylvania.

“I am enthusiastically comfortable with it,” member Vincent Cardamon said at his first meeting.

While it could be considered a gamble, “If you don’t do it you have no chance,” he said.

The grant program requires a 50 percent match, engineer Dave Tabak said, and the authority can use at the match the $26 million bond issue or the $15 million PENNVEST loan secured to build the plant.

Project director Guy Cunningham said he thought that the authority already having the matching funds “swings in our favor.”

Applications must be submitted by Feb. 13 and Tabak said it would probably be May or June before the authority would know if it would get any money from the state. The Department of Environmental Protection, which required the city upgrade the plant, will review applications, Tabak said.

Any project begun after Jan. 1, 2007, is eligible for funding, Tabak said, and construction on the plant didn’t start until that fall. Engineering costs could not be covered by the grant, if awarded, because those things were done prior to the deadline, he said.

Large cities are not eligible for the program, Tabak said, though he could not say how competitive it is likely to be.

The authority will pay MS Consultants $7,100 to prepare and submit the grant application, which Tabak said through hand gestures would likely be 12-inches thick.

If the authority gets the grant, MS engineer John Pierko said that would mean more extensive paperwork and additional fees from his firm that could possibly be paid out of the grant.