Officials with the Weirton Sanitary Board say they are ready to move forward with the first phase of a major Weirton sewer project.

Officials have been laying the groundwork for the project for more than two years. Monday night, City Council voted and approved two resolutions: One is a bond anticipation for the $1.3 million project, and the other gives authority to the Sanitary Board to engage in contracts with contractors to go forward with the project.

Two-and-a-half years ago, officials discovered that the sewage from about 1,000 buildings and homes in the northern end of the city was not flowing to the correct site -- the 5th Street Lift Station -- and was instead being redirected into the A-Outfall, which is the treatment area at the ArcelorMittal plant.

Tuesday, utility officials said they're ready to fix the problem and start on the first two phases of the project.

"This part will actually capture those thousand -- flow from those thousand structures, rechannel it back into the sanitary system and segregate it from the flows that ArcelorMittal is currently generating," Utilities Director Butch Mastrantoni said. "We have established an offsite treatment location within ArcelorMittal grounds which allows us to chlorinate the flow and disinfect it, as well as adding a chemical that removes that removed that chlorine so that it doesn't affect the aquatic life of the Ohio (River)."

Officials said no sewer water has been emptying into the Ohio River as a result of the problem.

Once the project gets started, it will benefit the Sanitary Board and the residents of Weirton. Officials said City Council knows this, and they have been very helpful in moving the project along.

"They've acted very responsibly. They've been a real good mechanism to keep us working towards our goal, which is to actually get this project in the ground so that it diverts those flows away from ArcelorMittal in the first phase and finally get  them in an efficient manner down to the Sanitary Board, where we can handle [them] the way they were always intended to be handled," Mastrantoni said.

On Thursday, James White Construction will be officially awarded the contract for the project, and workers there said they plan to start as soon as possible.

From there, construction crews will start the second phase of the project, which will reinforce the new lines, leading to the proper sanitation plant. That phase of the project is expected to be finished in 2013.

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