Millinocket gets $500,000 grant for Pines project

MILLINOCKET – It looks like the town’s $2.88 million infrastructure improvement project for the Pines will get a $500,000 boost from the state, Town Manager Eugene Conlogue said Tuesday.

Officials from the state Department of Economic and Community Development told Conlogue on Tuesday that the town’s Community Development Block Grant application had passed its first-phase review. That usually means a grant has been approved, Conlogue said.

“Applications almost never fail after they get through the first round,” Conlogue said Tuesday. “We will certainly not fail in this process.”

The project will upgrade or install more than 5,000 linear feet of sewer lines, storm runoff drains and roadways on Katahdin Avenue Extension, River Drive Park, Iron Bridge Road and part of Katahdin Avenue in the northern part of town. If all goes well, construction should begin this summer or by 2008.

The Town Council voted 7-0 last month to apply for about $1.8 million from the state Revolving Loan Fund and to use $200,000 from the town wastewater department’s capital reserve fund to help fund the project.

That money will be coupled with about $350,000 from Aqua Maine Inc., which supplies town water and will be doing its own infrastructure improvements to the area.

Conlogue’s grant application competed against 16 other municipalities’ applications for about $2.6 million in grant money.

“We are very, very happy,” Conlogue said of the news. “This is a major piece of financing.”

The sewer lines, which are decades old, are made of disintegrating clay pipe that must be flushed weekly to keep the system clear, and that costs the town money each time. Ground roots and underground water are infiltrating the system. The work is overdue by at least six years.

Conlogue said he will meet soon with engineers to begin Phase II, which involves designing the infrastructure replacement plan. Phase III is the cutting of the check.

If the town failed to qualify for the grant, town money would have had to replace the $500,000, but even with the grant, town wastewater service rates will likely increase by about 50 percent, Conlogue has estimated.

The exact increase won’t be known for a few weeks, Conlogue said.

Town wastewater rates are among the lowest in the state, Conlogue has said, at a minimum of about $37.50 per quarter, and the work will cause “a significant reduction in plant operating costs.” Once it is determined, the new service rate would go into effect July 1.

Town workers will run the new lines right to the foundations of 69 homes because most homeowners there could not afford to do the work themselves and having residents tear up the streets on their own to connect to services would undermine the project.

Seventy-six percent of the neighborhood is low- to moderate-income families.