U.S. funds to help pay for upgrade of sewers

DOVER-FOXCROFT – Town officials have taken full advantage of a federal program that provides matching funds for public sewer improvements.

For the second consecutive year, the town was approved for a matching 40 percent grant and 60 percent loan through USDA Rural Development for a sewer upgrade. The latest award means $873,000 in federal funds were pumped into the system along with about $1 million in local funds.

“We’re very pleased,” Dover-Foxcroft Town Manager Jack Clukey said Thursday. “This is a project just to get some of the worst areas of the old sewer upgraded.”

Clukey received word this month that the town received a $420,000 grant to be matched by a $630,000 loan that local residents earlier approved at the annual town meeting. Residents at that meeting approved the submission of an application for the federal funds and the loan and their acceptance, if awarded.

Last year, the town authorized selectmen to borrow $380,000 from USDA as leverage for a $453,000 grant, according to Clukey. Those funds were used to install new sewer lines on Autumn Avenue and Union Street, to purchase sludge removal equipment and to make lagoon liner repairs and manhole repairs.

The latest funds will pay for the installation of new pipes on Harrison Avenue, Mechanic Street to North Street, Spring and North Streets, and to the lower half of Pleasant Street, according to Clukey. These areas have a tendency to contribute much rain and groundwater into the system, he said.

The project funds invested from last year and this year will go far to upgrade the system, but there is still a significant amount of improvements needed, Clukey said.