BRUNSWICK

It’s time to plan for upgrades at the town’s waste water treatment plant, and Brunswick Sewer District Executive Director Leonard Blanchette wants residents and district staffers to be educated about the process — and their options.

The original plant is 47 years old. The “new” system — added in 1987, the last time the facility underwent renovation — now is 26 years old.

The reasons for the upgrades are “just technology and age,” Blanchette told The Times Record.

“Some of the equipment is almost 50 years old. Everything still works well, but it’s just old,” he said. “I went to (engineering firm) Wright-Pierce and said, ‘What’s my next 20 years?’”

There are two parts to the potential upgrades. However, only the first phase — the treatment plant itself — will be up for consideration.

A second phase, which likely won’t be addressed for at least another decade, mostly is dependent upon pending changes at the state and federal levels.

The Brunswick Sewer District is supervised by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection; together, they dictate the concentration of nutrients, such as phosphorous, copper, arsenic and nitrogen, that are permitted in the plant’s outflow stream.

Part of the reason for starting now is that Sewer District trustees adamantly are opposed to a double-digit rate increase. Better to start early and raise the money by increments, Blanchette said.

Current sewer rates are $46.85 per 1,000 cubic feet of waste water sent through the plants.

The average household in Brunswick uses about 2,000 cubic feet every three months. To fund the upgrades, rates could climb to $60 to $65 per 1,000 cubic feet by the time construction is ready to begin.

Preliminary project costs are estimated to be about $22 million for the first phase. Blanchette said the figure is only a rough estimate prepared by Wright-Pierce, and that the cost is likely to go down “the further along we get through the planning stages.”

Existing air and odor filtration systems require lots of energy — and therefore a lot of expense — to run, Blanchette said. Newer systems are smaller and more efficient, which means that less energy will be required to run the plant and that existing space could be repurposed for other uses, he added.

The plant also serves Brunswick Landing — which contributes about 20 percent of the incoming flow — and part of Topsham, with as much as 18 percent of the effluent that is filtered, separated, broken down, treated and trickled out.

Topsham residents will shoulder a matching percentage of the bond load required to fund the eventual improvements.

Although nothing is likely to be decided before mid- 2014, Blanchette and the Board of Trustees have scheduled an informational session for 7 p.m., Oct. 23, at the Sewer District’s 10 Pine Tree Road headquarters, off Jordan Avenue adjacent to Lishness Field.

“There’s no great rush, but it’s going to have to be done at some point,” Blanchette said. “It’s like anything else: the longer you wait to do maintenance, the more it’s eventually going to cost.”

jtleonard@timesrecord.com

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