I applaud the decision to connect to Devens water. This shows rational thinking about our future in Harvard.
I wish we had such rational thinking when we had the option to connect to Devens sewerage some years back. I believe Devens had offered to allow Harvard to buy into its sewage system but unlike Ayer, we inexplicably passed on that offer.
Shirley now has a conventional gravity sewer with lift stations, a townwide system working well, and Ayer uses Devens too, possibly sharing with their own city-size gravity setup.
We went with a very limited system “of our own.” It is more suited to a condo than a town, and although I tried to raise certain issues, such as the need for individual residential force pumps and generators to back them, the observation, as an engineer, went nowhere. Now we must maintain a disposal system that “injects” by force pumping millions of gallons of sewage effluent directly into our groundwater—while we run around testing wells for ppm. And we pay for maintaining that system, which will soon wear out—again (third time since I have lived here).
My point in this is that we should tell our engineers to place a force main in the same trench, at a very low incremental cost, so we do not incur the excavation disruption and cost twice—even if not an optimum route.
We should also include water and sewer lines under the Ayer Road project even if inactive, or we will rip up the brand new road in five years, (probably twice) to do so, wasting millions vs. having some obvious foresight.
These two projects need not be interconnected, either; with Devens cooperation and Harvard planning, two connections are fine.
John K. Grady
Slough Road
