Town hit with unexpected sewage bill

MECHANIC FALLS — A meeting took place on January 7 between the Mechanic Falls Board of Selectmen and the Mechanic Falls Sanitary District to discuss the town's wastewater treatment bill, an amount that did not go down after the removal of 22 of 38 catch basins.

The catch basins are located under the roads of the town, and in the older designs of sewer systems, like Mechanic Falls, the sewer lines as well as the drainage pipes all run through these catch basins and then flow into the treatment plant.

On an average of 6 times per year, during peak flow times, the catch basins will overflow due to added rainwater, and raw sewage will flow into the river. The Maine DEP is requiring the District to remove the basins to reduce these overflows. This mandate was given without any financing to cover the costs and therefore the Mechanic Falls Sanitary District was forced to borrow the money to remove these basins.

There are still 16 town-owned catch basins and nine state owned (under State Rt 121 or the Lewiston Rd) that need to be removed in the next phase of the improvements.

The recent improvements were financed by a $885,000 loan to the Sanitary District, which will be paid at a rate of $44,000 annually. This loan is borrowed at an interest rate of 3.375 percent, meaning that the town will spend $1,716,000 over 39 years to fully repay the loan.

Tom Schultz, the director of the Sanitary District explained to Town Manager John Hawley as well as Council members, Dan Blanchard, Nancy Richards, and Roger Guptill, that although the cost of treating the water may have slightly decreased due to less water through the plant, the debt incurred to the District to remove the Town’s catch basins has actually caused the price charged to the town to increase.

At last year’s budget meeting, the town agreed to remove the $30,000 line item in anticipation of the cost going down. However, the cost has actually increased to $42,200 a year. “This rate is actually $28,440 below the actual cost,” Shultz said. The District’s cost due to the Town’s basins is $70,640 a year.”

Selectwoman Nancy Richards stated, “This is a hard pill to swallow, but I guess we have to pay it.” Hawley told Shultz that unless a special town meeting is called, the bill cannot be paid until the new fiscal years starts July 1st, 2011, probably out of the fund balance. “And hopefully, due to the fact that there was a dispute with the bill and this meeting to be held, the District trustees will drop the interest charges on the overdue bill when we pay the bill.”

"The concern also is with the next phase of removing the catch basins,” Hawley added. "The state has refused to pay their portion of their bill, and now there is talk of turning the state road over to the town. This means we will also have to foot the bill of paying for the removal of those catch basins if that happens.”

Selectman Guptill asked, “Why does the state not have to pay their portion?” to which Shultz replied, “When we sent a bill to the State for the treatment of the waste water in their catch basins, they replied by saying they have never, nor will they ever, pay for this bill. “

“So really, the town and the taxpayers will end up paying for this bill one way or another,” Guptill said.