FORT KENT – The Fort Kent Water Department will be getting an aeration system, if the department can find the money to fund the $700,000 cost.

The town council agreed Monday night to proceed with the project, which is expected to take care of lead and copper problems in the municipal water supply.

The councilor also signed an agreement with Wright and Pierce Engineers to do the bidding work and supervise construction of the project.

“We will have to work on the funding to make this happen, Town Manager Donald Guimond said Tuesday. “The funding is not all together yet.

“Users can also expect a rate adjustment, probably during the start of 2002,” Guimond said. “We need to go through the Maine Public Utilities Commission to raise rates.”

Late last year, town officials believed they could get funding through the Safe Drinking Water Fund. That is no longer a certainty. Guimond said the town will be looking at other avenues of funding.

Until the aeration system is operational, the town will continue using chemicals to make the drinking water safe.

“Chemicals are not the permanent solution to the problem,” Guimond said.

“If we can get the funding in line, we will have construction this summer and fall, with anticipated operation in February 2002,” Guimond said.

The municipal water system has not been in compliance with water quality guidelines since 1972, because of elevated levels of lead and copper. Engineers have said the aeration system would remedy the situation.

The town hoped to get $250,000 from the Community Development Block Grant program, a federally funded program. The town had been approved for a $300,000 loan from the Safe Drinking Water Fund, and officials hoped more money would come from the loan program.

The CDBG application for the aeration system violates a subsequent year award because the town received a water and sewer main grant this year. The town could apply one year from now.

Councilors earlier opted for the CDBG application for the aeration system over a proposal to help rectify bad roads and water problems in the Park Circle area, and a proposal to enter into a partnership project with SAD 27 to renovate a building which would serve as a CHIPPY Center.

The town would have liked a CDBG grant to minimize the cost to users of the water system. The aeration system has been a municipal priority for a long time.

The project, said Guimond, is one of the few priorities of the 1992 comprehensive plan that has not been completed.

Until January of this year, the Fort Kent Utility District was a quasi-municipal organization with its own board of directors. The district included the services for both municipal water and sewer utilities.

In January, the district was dissolved and the two utilities became a department of the town. Its operations are overseen by the town council and Guimond. The water utility has 750 customers, mostly in the urban area of town.