Tyngsboro gets $480G surprise from Dracut Water Supply
TYNGSBORO >> The Dracut Water Supply District caught the Tyngsboro Middle School Building Committee by surprise at a recent meeting when the DWSD said it was imposing a systems-development fee of $480,000 for connecting to its water line.
Meeting with the Select Board this week and providing an update on the new middle school project, David Saindon of Leftfield, the company providing project management for the town, said, “I have never seen a fee of that magnitude.” Town Manager Matt Hanson told The Sun that news of the fee “was kind of sprung on the team” at an initial meeting with DWSD in February.
When asked for comment, DWSD Superintendent Walter Sheu put the responsibility on Tyngsboro officials.
“Nobody contacted us,” he said. “This is very common practice.”
DWSD always charges a fee when new subdivisions and houses connect to the district’s water lines, according to Sheu.
Sheu said there was a disparity in the size of the lines that Tyngsboro is trying to connect to the DSWD’S lines. He said the town wants to connect a 4-inch line to an 8-inch line.
Hanson said this is not the case. What the town wants to do is connect an existing 8-inch line, he said. This is not new construction, he emphasized.
The town is tearing down an existing building, but it is keeping infrastructure like the water lines. They may be moved to meet the needs of the school’s new footprint.
Sheu said that Tyngsboro did not give the district “a break” on its road work fees about 18 months ago when
DWSD needed to dig up the roadway in the Frost Road neighborhood to build a new water treatment plant along the Merrimack River.
After months of backand-forth between residents near the proposed water treatment plant, the Select Board and the district, DWSD received a special permit to build a plant on property at 166 Frost Road, adjacent to the well fields at 170 Frost Road it has operated for 70 years.
The DWSD confronted two mission-critical problems to meet the needs of growing populations in Dracut and Tyngsboro: Contaminated wells in both towns and capacity limits at the Tyngsboro wells.
DWSD had to dig up parts of Frost Road to reach the well fields and the new treatment plant.
Responding to a question from Select Board member Katarina Kalabokis, Hanson said that there is probably some room for negotiation over the $480,000 fee.
Select Board member Hillari Wennerstrom, who also co-chairs the Middle School Building Committee, predicted some “tough conversations” ahead with DWSD.
The DWSD provides water to 24,830 Dracut residents, or 80.9% of that town’s population. It also provides water to 2,500 Tyngsboro customers, or 20% of its population, according to a study by Tighe & Bond, an engineering and environmental consulting firm employed by DWSD. It also supplies water to Tyngsboro High School and the middle school.
In 2019, the state Department of Environmental Protection issued a health warning to DWSD regarding high levels of manganese and iron in the water coming from the Tyngsboro wells which, without a filtration plant, has ended the use of those wells now and into the future.