OPAL Commons residents express concern at a neighborhood meeting.
Eastsound Water and Sewer Commissioners faced questions and concerns from OPAL Commons residents and other western neighborhoods about the sewer expansion planned for summer 2009 and beyond.
“We are fully aware of the financial burden hooking up to the town sewer system will be for most of you,” EWSC Commissioner Ed Sutton said. “That’s why we want to work with you.”
Sutton said the EWSC has obtained a grant for $85,000 to fund installation of side sewers in the neighborhoods next summer.
Unless additional funding is found, homeowners could be required to come up with $6,000 to $10,000 per household to hook up to the town sewer mains within two years.
“How to lesson the impact of the rest of the cost is what we have been talking about for the past few years,” Sutton said. “We are moving forward as fast as we can because there is a real concern about the safety of the water.”
Despite rumors that the EWSC was rushing forward sooner than expected – the project is about three years into a five-year time frame – and what commissioners see as a critical need to get Eastsound hooked up to head off sewage-related pollutants, the timeline for individual homeowners has not changed, Sutton said.
The work to be done in 2009 needs to be completed or the EWSC will lose the grant money.
“There is absolutely no one else out there who is going to do anything to protect this water system from sewage infiltration,” commissioner Mike Stolmeier said after the meeting. “There were other worthy issues that could have gotten the grant money, but this is a priority.
“Sewage is getting into the water system.”
Among the solutions to lessen the financial burden mentioned at the meeting was amortizing the cost over 20 years.
But that idea met with resistance from several of the audience members who were concerned about the amount they would then have to pay in interest.
“We add that up as being about $25,000 in interest over the course of the loan,” said Laurie Gallo, speaking on behalf of OPAL Commons residents. “We have learned to save first and spend when it is required of us, but when we have the money.
“To be part of OPAL we were required to clear our debt first. For us to go back into the debt that we promised to stay out of would be wrong.”
One member of the audience questioned the need for hooking up to the sewer system, since they’d been told that “conservatively, the life of a drainfield is 25 years and the outset could be 40 years.”
Stolmeier responded, “That was what a salesperson interested in selling you a septic system said. No one measures how your septic is doing. If you don’t smell it or see it, then people believe their septic system is functioning well. There is no intermediate level between ‘good’ and ‘crisis’ with sewer systems.”
Sutton said he would like to start with seeing testing of drainfields on an annual basis, so if one is failing, the ESWD could work with that homeowner and perhaps neighbors to take care of the problems.
As far as the two-year timeline is concerned, Sutton said that they could work on testing the drain fields and septic systems as an alternative. They did not have to complete putting homeowners on the system within two years.
Those at the meeting expressed a desire of being part of the decision-making process, and the commissioners responded by asking them to form a neighborhood committee to work with the project. The first meeting between the groups is planned for January.
“We have the legal authority to force the issue and go through the door like a gorilla with a huge hammer and say you have to hook-up now,” Sutton said. “This is a small community, and these are our neighbors. I won’t do business that way, and I truly believe my colleagues feel the same way. We want to work with them to make it happen in a way that has as little impact on them financially as possible.
