WILTON – Selectmen are planning two public hearings for an estimated $9 million upgrade to the town’s sewer treatment infrastructure, designed to extend the life of the plant by another 20 years.
Public hearings have been tentatively scheduled for April 20 and May 4, both Tuesdays, starting at 6:30 p.m. at the town office. Selectmen and project planners still need to meet with the Department of Environmental Protection prior to those hearings, so those dates could change.
The town’s sewer treatment plant is 31 years old, and has exceeded its life expectancy. The sewer department is also utilizing 31 aging pump stations to maintain pressure through Wilton’s challenging topography, and those stations need repair as well. Selectmen and others have credited Sewer Department Superintendent Russ Mathers and his department for keeping the system running as efficiently as it does for as long as it has, and Mathers received an award from the DEP last year for his work in Wilton.
However, selectmen, Town Manager Rhonda Irish and Mathers have now begun planning for a major upgrade, scheduled to be completed in December 2013. After employing Olver Associates Inc., of Winterport, to conduct an assessment of the system, selectmen received a recommendation that the system be renovated rather than replaced or modified to send sewage to a neighboring town for treatment.
The plan is to hold the public hearings and have the issue of the upgrade appear on the June 2010 town meeting warrant. The preliminary $9 million cost for the project would be covered by U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Program funding. Irish said that selectmen believe the town can have 45 percent of the project funded through a grant and the remaining 55 percent funded through a 30-year loan. That loan would be covered entirely by sewer system users, not taxation.
“We’re doing this now because the plant is 31 years old,” Irish said, “but also because 45 percent grants don’t come around every day.”
At Tuesday evening’s meeting, Selectman Tom Saviello urged residents to take advantage of the public hearings and inform themselves about the project.
“When the hearings begin, people need to be involved,” Saviello said, “because it will affect their [sewer] rate.”
“It is going to mean rate increases,” Irish said Wednesday. She noted that the town had not had a sewer rate increase for the past couple of decades, with an average family of four paying roughly $270 a year.
The public hearings, tentatively scheduled for April 20 and May 4, will be officially announced by the town sometime in the next few weeks. A town meeting vote would be necessary to undertake the project.
