Castine meeting to focus on water, sewer projects

CASTINE – Residents will vote on funding for major sewer and water improvements when they gather for the annual town meeting next week.

Discussion of the municipal articles on the warrant will begin at 7 p.m. Monday, March 26, at Delano Auditorium on the campus of Maine Maritime Academy. The meeting will reconvene at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, to act on the school articles.

The town has been working for several years to develop a plan to upgrade the municipal wastewater treatment plant in order to correct problems that have resulted in a notice of violation from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

Voters at the annual town meeting in 2005 approved a conceptual plan for improvements to the plant and, since then, the town has worked with DEP to develop a consent agreement for the changes to the plant.

The warrant article asks voters to authorize selectmen to borrow up to $3.5 million for the project. That amount is considerably higher than the estimate of $2.75 million that the town presented in 2005, reflecting increased construction costs nationwide, according to Town Manager Dale Abernethy.

“We had a good-faith cost estimate back two years ago,” Abernethy said Thursday. “Prices went up more than expected.”

If voters approve the project, construction would begin this spring and would be completed by the end of 2008.

Residents also will be asked to approve the borrowing of $550,000 to an arsenic removal system at the town’s Wadsworth Cove Road well, the primary source of water for the town. The project would filter the water in order to meet new federal standards for allowable arsenic in municipal drinking water.

Abernethy stressed that the arsenic levels in the water from the well have not changed since the well was drilled. Only the federal standards have changed, dropping the allowable level of arsenic from 50 parts per billion to 10 ppb, he said. The well has been producing water in the range of 20 to 25 ppb, well within the previous federal limits, he said.

As a stopgap measure, the town has been mixing water from the well with other water sources, but, he said, that is not a long-term solution.

“The best way to deal with this is to remove the arsenic,” he said.

If voters approve the funding, the filtration system will be installed by this summer, he said.

Eleven of the 44 municipal articles on the warrant deal with changes to the town’s zoning ordinances. The changes fall into three categories, according to Abernethy: housekeeping changes, changes to bring the local ordinances into compliance with updated state regulations, and changes that will require more construction activities to undergo planning board review before approval.

Voters also will decide whether to approve a $15,000 increase in the library budget that would increase the number of people working at the library and also increase the hours that the library is open. They also will act on a petitioned article seeking to increase the transfer station attendant position to full-time and to expand the hours of operation.

The proposed municipal budget totals $1,709,528, including capital improvement projects, a reduction of $57,578 from the current budget. Finance Director Karen Motycka said that last year, the town approved $250,000 for improvements at Emerson Hall. Although half of that amount was borrowed and will have to be paid back this year, the budget includes only $20,000 for projects at Emerson Hall this year, she said.

The school budget totals $1,133,992, an increase of $9,928 above the current budget.