Town officials said again this week that they expect the new town center sewer system to be ready to operate by early October, at which time property owners will be able to retire their septic systems and hook up.
Word of the latest schedule came Monday evening at an informational meeting organized by the sewer commissioners for town center residents and held in Volunteers Hall at the publc library. Roughly 35 owners of the 84 sites in the new district turned out to hear a preview of the steps they must follow to tie into the new sewer mains threading their way through the center of town.
—Rick Maiore, sewer commissioner
Some pressed for answers to conditions unique to their property; others fretted over worst-case scenarios. In most cases, clear answers were forthcoming. But the commission and the four other town officials seated at the speakers’ table could offer no balm for the greatest concern of them all: that at some future date, the system might run out of capacity to serve everyone in the district.
Town Administrator Tim Bragan led the presentation with a brief update on the construction schedule. Right now, he said, work is expected to end by the end of July. After that there will be a period during which the state Department of Environmental Protection will inspect and test the plant “to make sure everything is working properly.”
“The [DEP] will give us a permit, and 30 days after that we’ll be able to start connecting everyone,” Bragan said. “That puts us somewhere around the beginning of October to start connections.”
Owners’ costs include installation and usage
Next up was finance director Lorraine Leonard, who explained the various costs that property owners will be expected to absorb (see chart). Once the system is operational, she said, every owner in the district will be assessed a betterment fee, that the town has promised will not exceed $18,700 per betterment unit. The betterment will not be calculated until the system is complete, said Leonard, because the amount is the owner’s slice of the cost of building the system and will not be known until the last manhole cover is in place.
Leonard said the betterment fee will be added to the property tax bills of everyone in the district and can be paid either at once, or in quarterly installments over 20 years at two percent interest.
Once DEP declares the system operational, owners will next have to decide whether to connect. Each owner is responsible for purchasing and installing a grinder pump, including the cost of the pump itself, the digging of a trench from street to house, and the laying of a connecting pipe and other electrical and plumbing work. Kyle Hedrick, of Fairbank Street, a member of the commission, guessed that the installation could take from two to six days and cost anywhere between $6,000 and $15,000, depending on factors unique to each property, such as the distance of buildings from the main and the amount of ledge encountered.
Leonard confirmed that the town will choose the grinder pump to be used throughout the district and will negotiate a price with the manufacturer based on the quantity it expects residents to purchase. The town will also qualify and license a number of “drain layers” to do the actual installation. Property owners will choose their contractors from a list vetted by the Commission.
“If you have someone in mind to do the work for you, please encourage them to apply for a license,” said Sewer Commission chairman Cindy Russo. “We want to sign up as many as we can.”
Although property owners will not be able to connect until mid to late fall, the commissioners encouraged residents to begin planning the work now. Public Works Director Rich Nota told the gathering that unless there is another mild winter, the construction season in central Massachusetts typically ends sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That leaves a three- to eight-week window this fall for residents who want to connect immediately, he said.
Residents worry about reliability, power failures
Among the many questions directed to the commissioners and other officials, property owners wanted to know what would happen in the event of a prolonged power failure, such as the Halloween outage that left most of the town in the dark for a week last fall. DPW director Nota said the pumps would be equipped with an electrical connection that would allow town workers to connect a generator and flush the contents of their tanks periodically. He said the major pumps at Bromfield and Hildreth schools were equipped with backup generators of their own.
What is the risk that a pump might fail, asked Marc Vilain of Oak Hill Road? The expected life, said Nota, is 20 to 25 years.
“A failure in 15 years would be premature,” he said, adding that in the event of a failure, it is unlikely the entire pump would need to be replaced. He said that a commercial system in Wayland with nearly 100 pumps had experienced only two issues–both “maintenance related”–in seven years of operation.
But it was the question of the future capacity of the system that was of greatest concern to some attendees. The discussion emerged from an earlier exchange between sewer commissioner Rick Maiore and Billy Salter of Elm Street concerning the right of commercial and residential owners to add to their properties at some future date.
According to the sewer bylaw passed at Town Meeting in 2009, property owners have that right, if they can show that they could have built a Title V septic system on their property to handle any additional effluent. But the sewer plant was designed to handle the homes, business, municipal and other buildings as they are configured today and the commission, respecting the wishes of the Selectmen and committees that have preceded it, says it wants to do what it can to ensure that everyone who pays a betterment fee can connect now or 20 years from now, a goal that, in theory, could impinge on those rights.
Capacity trumps everything
The wastewater treatment plant on Massachusetts Avenue was designed to handle 23,000 gallons of water per day, but authorized by the DEP for 20,000 gallons per day. To provide a buffer, the Sewer Commission has decided to reduce that number to 19,000 gallons per day. These amounts are based on a study of the rate at which properties in town center use town water from Harvard’s wells, a study done by the Sewer Action Group three years ago. But the actual flow of wastewater through the system won’t be known until it starts up this fall.
“We want to run the system for a year so we can see how many gallons are being used by those properties that are hooking up,” said Commissioner Rick Maiore. Once they can see the slope of that curve, he said, the sewer commissioners will know better whether the system has excess capacity or not. “We suspect [the usage] is going to be fairly low,” he added.
This discussion prompted a question from Ken Swanton of Fairbank Street. He is among those who don’t plan to connect immediately to the system, because his own Title V system is in good condition.
“If 10 to 15 years from now I want to connect, will I still be able to connect in the future if I need to?” Swanton asked.
“What will determine that is if there’s capacity in the system,” Maiore answered, “….[and] this commission is going to guard that capacity very judiciously.”
“But you’re charging us a betterment fee of $18,700 when we may not be able to connect in the future?” asked Swanton.
“Well, the paradox here is that typically when a sewer district goes in, everyone hooks up, whether they like it or not,” said Maiore. “And they get charged the betterment.
“We’re doing it a little bit differently,” Maiore continued. “We’re saying that we’re going to give you the option of not connecting when the system first comes in. And the risk is that we won’t have the capacity when you want to hook up. This is what the Commission is very concerned about. This is what’s going to drive everything we look at when there’s any movement in the district. Not to deny….”
Here Maiore was interrupted by Salter.
“…With all due respect,” Salter said, “these issues were raised repeatedly before. And we were assured repeatedly, including at Town Meeting…that people could hook up over 20 years. I understand there may be a real capacity constraint. There are two ways to deal with that fact.” One way would be to say, ‘Sorry, you’re too late.’ That’s what the commission is saying.”
“That’s not what we’re saying at all. It’s what you’re saying,” Maiore answered.
Salter continued: “The second thing the town could do would be to honor the commitments that it made. And the commitments that it made would involve…another leach field. That’s the other alternative.”
“That’s exactly the solution,” Maiore agreed. “But what we’re trying to do is to make sure [we don’t get to that situation] by being very careful to guard capacity. We can guard capacity, but there are issues outside [that we can’t control]. DEP could come in and say, we’re going to change the rules. Your capacity now is 15,000 gallons, not 20,000. These are the things the three of us are very sensitive to. We recognize the tremendous investment you’ve put into this. And we’re going to try to make sure it’s protected.”
