Many property owners in the Harvard town center sewer district hoped to connect to its new collection system this year. They will have to wait a bit longer.
The Press has learned that last month, when workers were attempting to replace sand in a filter at the upgraded water treatment plant on Massachusetts Avenue, they discovered a hole at the bottom of a key fiberglass component. The damage was completely unexpected, workers say, but has to be fixed.
Jim Arthur of Weston & Sampson, the plant operator, told the Press Tuesday that it was a mystery how the damage had occurred. The exact problem will not be known until the filter is lifted out of the ground and dismantled for examination, he said.
This latest setback means that the businesses, churches, and residences around the Common that had hoped to decommission their septic systems and hook up to the system this fall will likely have to wait until the New Year.
Town Administrator Tim Bragan told the Board of Selectmen Tuesday that he and project engineers had decided to pull the filter from the ground and send it to a local Massachusetts firm, Pride Environmental of Taunton, for repair. But he did not say when the repair would be done or how much it would cost.
As of Wednesday, the filter was still in the ground, but Wayne Perry of Norfolk Ram, the plant’s designer, told the Press that he expected Pride Environmental to start work next week.
“They’ll pull it out, throw it on a flat bed, and take it to their shop,” he said.
Repair is likely to take one to two weeks, after which the filter will be returned to the site, installed in its concrete tank and tested, Perry said.
The inoperable treatment plant filter is a complex mechanism that removes solids from wastewater before the effluent is released to the plant’s leaching field. The damaged part is a pyramid-shaped fiberglass cone, roughly 10 feet tall, that sits on its apex at the bottom of a concrete tank and holds the sand that filters wastewater. The filter is the caboose in the train of settling tanks and treatment packages that process wastewater from the town.
Perry said he also had no idea what had caused the cone to crack. It has been a part of the plant since 2000. Perry said its manufacturer, Parkson Corporation of Fort Lauderdale, had told him there have been no problems with similar units.
“We definitely want to know what went wrong so we can prevent such damage in the future,” he said.
Until it is back in service, the plant will operate without the broken filter so it can continue to handle wastewater from the schools and library.
“The good news,” said Perry, “is that when Jim [Arthur] recently measured total suspended solids being released into the leach field, it was well below the limit set by the DEP.”
This summer, at the urging of Arthur, engineers added a bypass to their plans that allows the filter to be removed from the system. The bypass allows the rest of the system to operate on those occasions when the sand in the filter has to be replaced.
“I thought that would be useful,” Arthur said.
Betterment deadline
Delays at the plant have pushed out some but not all of the milestones for the project. Oct. 31, the deadline for residents to pay their betterments, has come and gone. Assistant assessor Sue Fitterman said seven property owners had paid their betterment in full. Everyone else will be given 20 years at two percent interest to pay off their balance. The charge will appear quarterly on their tax bills.
The total amount each property owner owes will be recorded as a property lien at the state Registry of Deeds. The $75 dollar recording fee will appear on owners’ next tax bills as well. Finance Director Lorraine Leonard was preparing to send her preliminary list to the Registry this week so that the registration fees could be added to the next quarterly tax bill when it’s mailed at the end of December. The charge for a single betterment is $18,700, which, amortized over 20 years, works out to roughly $278 per quarter.
Sewer decisions
Tuesday night the Selectmen wrapped up another piece of business by approving a note to borrow $2,540,382 to pay for construction of the sewer. The money will be borrowed from a wastewater abatement trust fund at less than one percent interest per year. The first payment is due July 1, 2013.
And finally, the Sewer Commission decided this week not to mail an information packet to property owners on how to connect to the system until the plant is ready. Even if repairs are completed within the next three to four weeks, the state Department of Environmental Protection must still issue the town a permit to operate the plant and the town must then wait 30 days before residents can begin to connect.
According to Bragan, as of Tuesday no one had applied for a drain layer’s license. Such a license is required of contractors who want to be in the business of installing the grinder pumps and laying pipe needed to connect buildings to sewer mains. The Sewer Commission has said for weeks it wants to be ready with a list of seven or more fully licensed contractors when the time comes.
