Members of the Derby Board of Aldermen and the city’s Water Pollution Control Authority will be sitting down Monday to talk about the laundry list of repairs and other issues involving the city’s sewer system.
A referendum — initially between $20 million and $35 million — for work on the ailing sewer systems was supposed to be put to voters last spring under former Mayor Anthony Staffieri’s administration, but it never happened.
The WPCA held a series of public forums last year to explain why money is needed for a number of upgrades and repairs to the sewer system, but Mayor Anita Dugatto’s administration hasn’t moved the referendum along, either.
Meanwhile, John Saccu, the chairman of the city’s WPCA, appears at every Aldermen’s meeting and basically says ‘Hi, I’m from the WPCA. We’re still here and we still need to make repairs.’
On July 24, after listening to an exchange between Saccu and Dugatto about the $5 million replacement of a “belt press” and associated equipment at the city’s sewage treatment plant, Barbara DeGennaro, president of the Board of Aldermen, interrupted to suggest the Aldermen hold a meeting where everything could be discussed in detail.
“If we’re going to referendum, we need to move,” DeGennaro said.
The date of the special meeting — Monday, Aug. 4 — was announced Thursday.
The meeting agenda is below:
Derby BOA, WPCA, PART II by ValleyIndyDotOrg
Saccu also told the Board of Aldermen that the Derby WPCA held two meetings with the Ansonia WPCA to talk about merging. One of those meetings included representatives from the state.
He pointed out that even if Derby and Ansonia decided to regionalize, the repairs and upgrades on the Derby side still have to happen.
