FREEPORT – People driving in and out of South Freeport are still dealing with traffic detours, clam flats along the Harraseeket River have been closed and Freeport Sewer District customers might see a rate increase.

But Lee Arris, general manager, says the sewer district did what it had to do when raw sewage began flowing downhill into the river, following a pipe break near the Porter’s Landing pump station on South Freeport Road in mid-May.

“We got to it, and sewage was coming out of the pipe and had made its way to the surface and was flowing down to the Harraseeket River,” Arris said. “It flowed into the river, a bit of it. You have to immediately repair it, which we did.”

Arris said that stone used for back fill when the pipeline was built more than 40 years ago shifted over the pipe, and caused a hole. Sewer district crews replaced the pipe, but two days later, a few hundred feet up the road, there was another break. And then another.

“It was the same reason,” Arris said. “We were violating our discharge permit. We had to make a decision on how to repair that old infrastructure. We decided it was probably like that along the 2,100 feet of forced main. The board made the decision to replace the line. It’s a major project.”

So began the disruption of traffic and clamming, but Arris expected the project to be complete by the middle or end of this week. Traffic lanes have been closed from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. on the half-mile stretch of South Freeport Road leading to Lower Mast Landing. Crews rerouted traffic back and forth to West, Main and Pine streets.

Then there was the matter of paying for a $700,000 project.

“Because it was an emergency,” Arris said, “we were able to contact the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, from the (Department of Environmental Protection).”

The sewer district will repay the 20-year note at a rate of $42,000 a year, Arris said. Much of that money was used to install a bypass system and remove the defective pipe, he said.

That, in turn, could amount to a rate increase of around 4 percent, but the board of directors is yet to decide on that, Arris said.

The clamming flats, meanwhile, were closed for three weeks in the upper reaches of the Harraseeket.

“That three-week shutdown this time of year is a disaster for clammers,” Arris said. We were committed to protecting that river, for everybody. That’s one of the major reasons we moved this quickly.”

Arris’ brother, Del, is president of the Freeport Shellfish Conservation Commission. Del Arris praised the sewer district for its quick work.

“We had like three breaks, right in a row,” Del Arris said. “But gee, they did a tremendous job going about fixing it. They could have just shut us down, the old-fashioned way, but they ran a temporary line. Ironically, we got shut down because of the rain, too. But the clam diggers are happy they went about it that way.”

When the Harraseeket clam flats are closed, Arris said, clammers make do. They scrounge for clams along Flying Point, Wolfe’s Neck and Winslow Park.

“Those flats are not as productive,” he said. “If you had the entire crew going out there all summer, it would be tough to make a living. We managed to survive.”

Lee Arris said that the Porter’s Landing pump station between Allen’s Pond and the river handles 85 percent of the waste water generated in Freeport.

“That pump station is key,” he said. “It pushed the waste water from that station up the hill through that pipe.”

The Freeport Sewer District is replacing a busted main at the Porter’s Landing pump station in a project that should wrap up this week.