$102 million water treatment plan advances
DANBURY — Voters will be asked to approve a $102 million referendum in November for federaland state-mandated upgrades to the region’s aging wastewater treatment plant in Danbury.
The City Council begrudgingly agreed Monday night to put the bond question before voters despite members’ skepticism that the costly upgrades will have any significant impact on the outflow into local waterways.
But council members say state and federal environmental rules have forced their hands to advance the plan despite its jaw-dropping price.
Now the city finds itself up against a series of deadlines to implement the proposed upgrades or face steep penalties from state environmental authorities, ranging from daily fines to outright losing its state permit for the plant.
“It’s not something we’re happy about doing, but it is what it is and it has to be done,” Council President Joe Cavo said after the meeting. “This is one of those infrastructure things we have to deal with and it’s a quality of life issue — you have to keep flushing your toilet and washing your dishes. But it’s for the voters to decide, so we have to put it to them.”
Still unclear, though, is how much the project might ultimately cost some city residents and business owners, Public Works Director Antonio Iadarola said.
Although every city voter will be eligible to cast a ballot on the referendum question, only homeowners and businesses connected to city sewer will bear the cost through their monthly sewer bill.
Any ultimate rate increase necessary to fund the project cannot even be estimated until bids go out next spring and the state decides how much grant funding it will receive, both of which will happen well after voters would be asked to approve the borrowing, Iadarola conceded.
“It’s almost impossible to figure that out at this stage,” he told the council. “We’re trying to get our hands around that.”
The wastewater treatment plant off Newtown Road was last upgraded in 1993 and now serves Danbury, Bethel, Brookfield, Newtown and Ridgefield.
The referendum follows the city’s lengthy battles with state environmental officials and three environmental groups over treatment standards at the plant and some cases when it had to discharge untreated water into nearby brooks.
The city settled the lawsuit brought by environmental groups last year for a $100,000 fine and a series of updates to its regulations and the treatment plant itself. But it has now been a decade since the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection ordered the city increase its water treatment to remove 98 percent of phosphorous from the water leaving the plant.
The aging plant currently removes about 90 percent of phosphorous from the water — which can cause environmental or health problems in large amounts — but the planned upgrades will push the plant to the mandated 98 percent mark, Public Utilities Superintendent David Day said.
Mayor Mark Boughton agreed the city has “no choice” but to pay for the upgrades or face steep penalties, from daily fines to losing their state water treatment permit entirely.
“I don’t have a problem with (the upgrades), it’s the phosphorous removal that just gets absurd,” Boughton said. “I don’t think this is going to have any impact downstream, but we’re not going to win the argument. We’ve been fighting with the EPA and DEEP and just haven’t broken through.”
The 21-member council must authorize the referendum with a supermajority vote at its meeting in September to formally advance the question to ballots this fall.
If the council doesn’t, it risks losing state funding for the upgrades and a consent order to complete the upgrades anyway, city corporation counsel Les Pinter said. If voters vote down the borrowing, the city likely would face the same dilemma, he added.
Voters approved a $10 million bond referendum two years ago to begin the process of designing the upgrades and designs are about 70 percent complete as of this summer.
If approved by voters, the city would bid the project next spring and could begin construction later next year to complete the improvements by mid-2022.