Shenandoah to replace streetlights with LEDs

May 18—SHENANDOAH — The borough will replace its aging streetlights this year with a set of new LED lights.

At Monday's monthly meeting, the borough council approved an agreement with PPL Electric Utilities, allowing the company to replace Shenandoah's sodium-vapor lights with white LEDs at no cost to the borough.

Councilman Joseph Boris said work will begin in late August to replace more than 400 streetlights.

Boris said the new lights will be more cost- and energy-efficient, citing the difficulty of acquiring sodium-vapor lights.

He added that Shenandoah owns the lights on two blocks along Main Street — from Cherry to Oak, and from Lloyd to Coal. Those lights will be the borough's responsibility to replace.

In other business, the council announced it is now accepting glass for its recycling pilot program.

Councilman John Thomas said the program, which launched in March, will accept glass products beginning with its collection in June. The program had previously been exclusive to plastic bottles.

Katie Catizone, council president, said that all glass products will be accepted and that they do not have to be separated from plastics.

The collections take place on the second Friday of each month.

The program, which is the borough's first recycling initiative since early 2020, is intended in part to offset the borough's rising tipping fees.

Thomas said that about two dozen households participated in the inaugural collection in March.

Also during Monday's meeting, state Rep. Dane Watro, R-116, Kline Twp., visited borough hall and offered to lend his support to Shenandoah.

Watro, a former mayor of McAdoo, acknowledged that the council has a "hard job to do on a limited budget."

"I want to help in any way possible," he said.

Watro encouraged the borough to contact his office for help when applying for grants.

"Please reach out to my office for a letter of support so we can go ahead and try to aggressively pursue your grants and opportunities in the borough," he said.

In particular, he said, the Local Share Account grant will benefit many of Shenandoah's projects.

The Local Share Account Statewide program distributes gaming revenues through the Commonwealth Financing Authority to support projects in the state.

Watro said the program had previously been exclusive to communities near casinos but is now available to all municipalities.

"This is going to be huge for this community here," Watro said.

Downtown Shenandoah Inc. recently received an LSA grant for $1 million, which is being used toward its Center for Education, Business & Arts.

Contact the writer: hlee@republicanherald.com; 570-628-6085

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