As building season fast approaches, builders in Old Town and Milford are facing a problem that could bring a halt to any further development in the two towns.

Recently Gary Stetson, superintendent of sewers at the Old Town Wastewater Treament Plant, was informed that several criteria had to be met before the plant could accept any additional wastewater.

Stetson said it would take the city at least until fall of 1990 to comply with the criteria, established by the Department of Environmental Protection.

If the city’s treatment plant cannot accept additional wastewater, then development in the city will come to a halt, said Stetson. It is also bad news for Milford developers because Milford contracts with Old Town for wastewater disposal.

Stetson said that Donald Albert of DEP informed him that a Combined Sewer Overflow program must be on file with the DEP before additional wastewater could be accepted at the plant. Stetson said the CSO plan required officials to monitor spring and summer waterflows, which meant the plan could not be completed until fall.

The news quickly spread among developers and home builders in the area and Stetson said everyone was very concerned about the consequences of the DEP’s decision.

The crisis began when Stetson notified DEP of a local businessman’s plan to expand the Sunrise Mobile Home Park. Stetson said his license required him to notify DEP of any significant increase in waterflow.

Stetson said he disagreed with DEP’s decision and said the treatment plant was designed to handle 1.7 million gallons of water flow daily. He said currently the plant was receiving only about 1 million gallons.

“I feel we have the capacity to handle 700,000 additional gallons, but they said that didn’t count,” said Stetson.

The problem is not with the amount of sewage entering the plant, but with the amount of additional flow, such as ground water, he said.

“In real wet weather, the system has the tendency to take a lot of additional flow from cellar drains and roofs,” said Stetson.

He said the city’s piping system was relatively old and the plant experienced a fair amount of infiltration from the ground. This is the water that concerns the DEP, he said.

He said DEP was basically forcing the city to find a way to eliminate the ground water. He said the project could cause a lot of problems and might result in an ordinance that would prevent people from draining cellars and roofs into the sewer system.

“This could be a substantial problem. It’s going to cost somebody some money. The worse part is, I was told that, if I hadn’t asked about it (the mobile home park addition) and just granted it, then it wouldn’t have been a problem,” he said.