Brewer public works duo honored

BREWER – Two environmental technicians from the city’s Public Works Department received statewide recognition for their efforts to clean up the Penobscot River.

Ron Kidder and Eugene “Pete” Spencer have been named the 2002 winners of the Charles Perry Award, presented annually by the Maine Waste Water Control Association during the organization’s fall conference.

Kenneth Locke, the city’s director of environmental services, nominated the two for the award.

According to Locke, the Charles Perry Award is presented to a Maine municipality, district or private wastewater collection system for outstanding efforts in managing, operating and maintaining systems on the part of personnel from the winning system.

In the announcement letter, award committee chairman Leonard Blanchette noted that the “joint individual award” was a first for the committee. Consequently, the MWWCA presented two plaques and split the $50 cash award, with Kidder and Spencer each receiving half.

Kidder and Spencer are responsible for maintaining the city’s 46 miles of collection lines, a system built between 1900 and 1960.

Much of the system is a combined system built before prevailing collection practices were developed in the 1980s. Brewer, like many other communities, now is working to separate storm water from sewer lines.

Data collected in 1989 showed that as much as 750 million gallons of combined wastewater was entering the Penobscot River each year as a result of combined sewer overflows. Also in 1989, the state Department of Environmental Protection required the city to study its system and develop a master plan for sewer separation.

Kidder and Spencer volunteered to do the legwork needed for the study and have been involved in maintaining it.

According to Locke, the work Spencer and Kidder have done was instrumental in the success of the system’s preventive maintenance program – and for the city’s having won the 2001 CSO Excellence Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.