$35 million to upgrade the sewer plant
An update from Town Hall on the wastewater treatment plant:
Don Chelton of AECOM Consulting (formerly Metcalf and Eddy) reported at the December 16, 2009 WPCA meeting that the estimated cost for the Waste Water Treatment Plant upgrade will be approximately $35 million. This information had to be developed in order to be submitted to DEP for the grant/loan program. Mr. Chelton advised the Authority that the value of the project is still a work in progress but based on the information AECOM has available to date, he feels that the completed estimate will be in that range. He also advised the Authority that the draft facilities plan is just an initial step in developing the final project scope and cost. He said that he expected that one or more workshops would need to be conducted to review the scope of the proposed plant improvements and the financial impact the program would have on the community. Decisions will have to be made on whether to delete some items or possibly implement the program in phases. He also informed the Authority that phosphorous removal accounted for about 25% of the overall cost.
Using some pretty simple math... even if this was financed with 0% interest over twenty years... we'd be looking at a nearly $2,000,000 increase in the budget to finance this. I'm confident though that some of this relates to more energy-efficient equipment. In other words, some of that money could effectively be shifted from the "energy budget" to the "debt service budget." That's pretty much the performance contracting concept - paying capital costs through efficiency improvements.
Tim White
2 comments:
This bugs me. When I moved here many many years ago we had no sewer problems because we had none. We had sepic systems. Many people still have them and love them. They are natures way of getting rid of waste and not harm the environment. If we worked with this system and developed our Town with septic systems we wouldn't be in all this $"!'.
Why do we keep giving this limited, very expensive infrastructure away to rich developers who stuff thousands away into their pockets.
Each time these developers save on a septic tank, they save more than $10,000 a unit and if they were prohibited, because of wetlands or poor perc tests, they would not be able to develop many properties and would not be able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars if it were not for the sewar system.
As a private owner, I had to pay 100% for my septic system and have the maintenance costs and eventual replacement costs. Why do I have to pay for my own and have to subsidize the wealthy developers who simply dump their crap on the taxpayers. It certainly seems like welfare for the rich.
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