By Becky Coffey, Harbor News Senior
Staff Writer:
OLD SAYBROOK:
It was standing room
only last week at the high school as residents from the 15 beach neighborhoods
affected by the Water Pollution Control Authority’s new Facilities Plan came to
learn what wastewater treatment upgrades the town and state would impose on
their properties.
Some residents
showed their anger before the meeting even began as they said to neighbors and
friends that groundwater pollution has not been proven, but the tone was
attentive and respectful as the meeting’s presentations proceeded.
This public
information session to discuss the draft Wastewater Facilities Plan was called
as a special meeting of the Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA). While no
public comment was allowed at the meeting, the WPCA asked all in attendance to
write down their comments and questions. A commitment was made to address these
questions either that evening after the 50 minutes of town and state
presentations or at a later date.
The subject of the
meeting was the details of the draft Wastewater Facilities Plan that the town’s
engineering consultant, Fuss and O’Neill has developed over the last two years.
The plan was submitted to the Department of Environmental Protection in
mid-July, just in time to meet the DEP’s deadline of July 15. A letter from DEP
Commissioner Gina McCarthy to the town had threatened the town with an imposed
solution if the detailed lot-by-lot plan had not arrived by the deadline.
At the front of the
auditorium that evening were color-coded maps of each neighborhood showing each
lot’s fate–the specific type of fix that would be required to bring the lot’s
on-site septic treatment system into compliance.
John Wertam of
Shipman and Goodwin described the legal basis for the town’s recommendations to
property owners to upgrade their on-site septic systems.
“Why are we doing
this?” Wertam asked. “DEP took the town to court [after it voted to deny a
septic treatment plant] and the Connecticut Supreme Court more than 10 years
ago said that the town had groundwater pollution and that it must fix it.”
A stipulated
judgment issued in February 2007 sets forth the specific steps the town must
follow to abate this pollution.
“This town is bound
by a court order to get this done,” said Wertam.
Peter Gross of Fuss
and O’Neill then presented highlights of the draft Facilities Plan the firm had
prepared.
“The problems [the
plan addresses] are areas with high density development (where there may be
four to eight homes per acre), older septic systems, some of which are 50 years
old and built to old standards, and septic systems built on marginal land with
high groundwater or unsuitable soils,” said Gross.
Of the 1900
properties examined in the firm’s lot-by-lot analysis, Gross gave the following
statistics: on 20 lots, old metal tanks would have to be removed and replaced;
on 400 lots, drywells would have to be removed and replaced; on 550 lots,
undersized septic tanks would have to be upgraded; on 260 lots, a new. compact
septic leaching system would need to be installed; and on 480 lots, advanced
treatment systems to remove nitrogen from wastewater would be needed to avoid
adding excessive nitrogen to Long Island Sound.
“Conventional septic
systems need 24 inches between the bottom of the trenches and the groundwater,”
said Gross.
Gross also compared
the costs of the proposed septic system upgrades to the alternative of
installing sewers and a treatment plant. He quoted a capital cost per
residential unit of $21,000 for the plan’s septic upgrades compared to a cost
of $28,000 per unit to instead install sewers and build a treatment plant. As
for operating and maintenance costs, Gross said that an annual fee for
centralized treatment could be $500 per unit per year while the cost even to
operate an advanced treatment system per unit would be $600 to $800 per year.
The WPCA hopes for a
town referendum to set up a wastewater management district to manage the
upgrades program in summer 2009.