EASTHAM — A special meeting of the select board on Thursday, April 17 had a limited agenda: “administrative matters — wastewater project.”
That brief description packed a big punch, however: the board voted to schedule a special town meeting on Monday, June 23 and a town election on June 24 so voters can decide whether to accept $50 million in low-interest loans from the State Revolving Fund (SRF) to finance a municipal sewer system.
The matter was urgent, Finance Director Rich Bienvenue and Town Manager Jacqui Beebe told the select board, because Eastham had originally not qualified for loans that would begin in the upcoming fiscal year, which begins on July 1.
The town had appealed that determination by the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), Bienvenue said, and on April 8 the state released a final list of $1.24 billion in drinking water and wastewater financing that included a $50-million loan for Eastham’s $170-million wastewater project.
According to the rules for this batch of Revolving Fund loans, the $50-million loan will be automatically renewable as work progresses, Bienvenue told the select board. SRF rules have changed in recent years and could change again by fiscal 2027, Bienvenue said — so it was important that the town make its decision now while terms are favorable.
The fact that the loan is renewable is “significant,” Bievenue said, “so significant that when Jacqui and I reviewed that and talked about it, we realized there was no way for us to financially plan how to implement a wastewater system without a guarantee that SRF is going to fund our project to completion.”
If the town accepts the funding, it would be used to construct a sewer system that would serve 1,600 houses, Bienvenue said — about a quarter of the 6,349 houses in town.
The loan would need to be approved by a two-thirds majority at a special town meeting and by a simple majority of votes at a ballot-box election before June 30, as payments on the loan will be financed by property taxes as a debt exclusion under the state’s Proposition 2½.
June 24 is the last Tuesday in the month, so the election will be held that day, and the town meeting will be the day before, the select board decided.
Expensive Options
“We’re not doing this just because we want to get into the wastewater business,” Bienvenue said. “We’re under an order from the DEP to remove nitrogen from our estuaries.”
Current state regulations require property owners in designated nitrogen-sensitive areas to install “Innovative/Alternative,” or I/A, septic systems in order to reduce the amount of nitrogen that leaches from septic tanks into groundwater and estuaries, where it can cause algae blooms that deplete oxygen and kill wildlife. About 5,600 properties in town would need to install I/A systems under the current regulations, according to Bienvenue.
An I/A system costs about $50,000 to install and $3,500 to operate each year over an estimated 20-year lifetime, Bienvenue said — but the requirement for homeowners to upgrade is waived if towns are making active progress toward nitrogen reduction by constructing a municipal sewer system.
“We didn’t want to force our residents to implement these very expensive systems,” he said.
Bienvenue estimated that paying off the SRF loan would cost the average household about $1,000 per year in property taxes — even without factoring in some other possible funding sources. He was trying not to be “overly optimistic,” he said.
Select board member Jerry Cerasale said the situation was similar to one the town faced in the 2000s, when it chose to delay installing a municipal freshwater system.
The town wound up “paying more than we would have if we’d acted right away,” he said. “We’re going to have the same issue coming up on wastewater: if we don’t act right away, the community solution will cost more. If we don’t do the community solution, the I/A solution will cost significantly more.”
I/A systems are so expensive, in fact, that Bienvenue said he could imagine the town voting for a municipal sewer system even if voters reject the $50-million loan at the special town meeting in June.
“It’s not irrational to think that, if the SRF funding doesn’t pass, people will get the shock of what this means to them and say they need a centralized treatment plant” in a few years, Bienvenue said. Even without favorable financing, a sewer system would be “a lot less expensive than having to come up with their own I/A system.”
Abutters’ Concerns
The special select board meeting, held at 4 p.m. on a Thursday, did not have a large audience — but one person who lives near the proposed site of the wastewater treatment plant said he was worried about the impact on his home.
“It’s not about the funding — it’s where it is,” said Michael Dufresne, who lives on Glacier Hills Road near the DPW building at 555 Old Orchard Road, the likely location of the new wastewater treatment plant. “I don’t want to sit on my back deck and smell sewage,” Dufresne said.
“I’ll pay $100,000 for an I/A to not have this thing in my back yard,” he added.
Dufresne asked why the treatment plant couldn’t be built elsewhere, such as the town-owned T-Time property on Route 6 or behind Brewster Sand & Gravel at 2780 Nauset Road.
Select board chair Aimee Eckman said that the latter area was too close to a public water supply. “No matter how clean it is, they won’t let you discharge wastewater there,” she said.
Select board member Suzanne Bryan said that the DPW site was a logical choice because it was near the service area for the new sewer system.
Dufresne also criticized the town for a lack of public outreach. “There’s not a lot of information for such a rushed thing,” he said, adding that many people in his neighborhood had no idea that wastewater plans were advancing.
“We work so hard to live in this town, and we feel like the wool is being pulled over our eyes,” he added.
“I understand that this is going to be a very hard sell for the community,” Beebe said. “I think we need to work together and try to figure out how we can make this have as little impact as we can. Of course there are going to be smells, but not all the time, and not every day.”
Beebe said she believed that the state loan was the right choice for the town, but that Dufresne should come to the special town meeting and vote his beliefs.
“We’ve been talking about this for so long, and there are things we don’t know, there are things we haven’t designed yet,” Beebe said. “But if we don’t make the ask now, it’ll just be totally irresponsible.”
