STEUBENVILLE — A Pennsylvania contractor brought in to locate underground waterline leaks found eight of them in Smithfield, Amsterdam and Bergholz alone, Jefferson County Water and Sewer District Director Mike Eroshevich told county commissioners Thursday.

“He found a couple in Smithfield, more in Amsterdam and Bergholz,” Eroshevich said later. “Those are ones that aren’t surfacing, that we can’t find ourselves. He had equipment specially designed to do that, and he was able to find them.”

Crews have already begun repairs, he said.

Meanwhile, Eroshevich said leak protection will be included in the department’s new meter project, but it will be done by satellite.

“They’ll take satellite images of the county, do two passovers, then they’ll do a printout for us, reporting all of the leaks it detects,” Eroshevich said. “They did it in Lima and found 60 leaks.”

Finding those leaks ultimately will save the county money, since the county buys water from other sources “and if we’re not collecting revenue off it, it’s lost.”

And the fact that they couldn’t find the leaks “was compounding the problem” the county has had with line breaks — 36 of them so far this year, sometimes more than one at a time.

The fixes haven’t been cheap: He said they paid a private contractor about $100,000 to repair a line break in the Bloomingdale area two weeks ago running under U.S. Route 22. They also spent $32,000 on a part needed to fix an Amsterdam leak, on top of the labor involved.

“(And) we’ve had multiple breaks at the same time — our crew can’t fix all of them, so we’ve had to bring in outside contractors,” he said.

Eroshevich said engineers are working on plans for system upgrades in Amsterdam and Bergholz, “but we’ll still have Richmond, Smithfield and Irondale (to do.)”

He said they’re looking at new water mains, replacing pressure-reducing valves, probably new hydrants, and a water tank needs inspected and “probably rehabilitated or replaced” for Amsterdam, while Bergholz likely needs all-new water lines and hydrants as well as a new transmission line connecting the village to its pump station, which is outside village limits.

The catch: The upgrades will likely cost around $8 million and $10 million in each community, so they’ll be applying for grants and loans.

Eroshevich, meanwhile, pointed out line breaks are not just a Jefferson County problem: Communities throughout the region are grappling with the same problems.

“It’s everywhere,” he said. “Everything that was put in ground in the 1980s or before is past its useful life now and it all has to be replaced.

Commissioners, meanwhile, appointed Amy Lingerfelt to the Ohio Children’s Trust Fund board.

The courthouse will be closed Monday in observance of President’s Day.