The future of a roughly $20 million referendum to repair and upgrade Derby’s sewer infrastructure is in doubt after the state rejected a report from the city’s Water Pollution Control Authority.
The City of Derby received a letter May 12 from Dennis J. Greci, of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), saying his agency could not approve the WPCA’s facilities report.
John Saccu, chairman of the Derby Water Pollution Control Authority, said he doesn’t see how the city can proceed with a vote on the repairs and upgrades until the issues with DEEP are straightened out.
The DEEP letter doesn’t directly address all the repairs needed in a referendum that has been kicking around Derby for some two years, but Saccu indicated it could serve as a red flag and cause the public to reject any referendum put out to voters.
“It doesn’t preclude our plans for a referendum, but it makes it very difficult for us,” Saccu said during a WPCA meeting Wednesday.
Weston & Sampson, the engineering company used by the Derby WPCA, is writing a response to DEEP to seek more information, Saccu said.
In addition to casting doubt on the referendum, the DEEP letter also caused the Derby WPCA Wednesday to kill a $56 per unit fee they were going to levy on city sewer uses.
That money was supposed to be used to deal with failing equipment in the sewage treatment plant. Saccu said the board had to rescind its approval of the $56 fee because it was connected to the maligned facilities plan.
Derby WPCA employees have previously said the equipment could fail at any time. If that happens, Derby residents could be hit with an emergency bill to deal with the busted equipment.
Click here to read a previous story about the $56 “special assessment.”
The audio below is a 39-minute discussion from the Derby WPCA meeting Wednesday regarding the DEEP letter and the $56 fee.
The Facilities Report
The WPCA facilities report, according to a presentation last year, is a comprehensive look at Derby’s sewer infrastructure, detailing its current condition (decaying, neglected) and what needs to be done to fix the issues (a public vote to get permission to borrow millions of dollars to fix the problems).
For a simple explanation of the report, click here and scroll to page 10.
Part of the facilities plan includes roughly $9 million in planned upgrades and repairs to the sewage treatment plan.
According to the DEEP letter, Mayor Anita Dugatto met with state environmental officials March 12 to talk about Derby’s wastewater issues and whether Derby can connect its sewer system to Ansonia’s sewage treatment plant, something Derby WPCA engineers says is neither feasible nor cost-effective.
The May 12 letter was in response to the mayor’s meeting.
A copy of the letter is below.
The letter states that the Derby WPCA has little to no chance of getting any money from the Clean Water Fund to help with repairs to the sewage treatment plant.
The reason — DEEP thinks the scope of work outlined in the document is too limited and is spread out over far too much time.
“After reviewing your facility planning document we were somewhat puzzled that a limited scope of the plant upgrades are being proposed. A large portion of the needed upgrades are not scheduled to occur until 2027 and be completed by 2032 which is almost twenty years from now,” the letter reads.
The letter indicates that by the time the Derby WPCA gets around to making the repairs in 20 years, the state will have different and possibly more stringent regulations in effect, such as removing pharmaceutical products from sewage.
“The intention (of a facilities report) is to do the complete modernization now to last for the next twenty years. At this point we will not be approving your facility planning report since it does not address the upcoming 20 year planning period nor (is it) anticipated to receive any funding from the (Clean Water Fund) as presented,” the DEEP letter reads.
Reaction
The letter left Saccu and Lindsay King, the Derby WPCA superintendent, scratching their heads.
Saccu said he didn’t receive a copy of the May 12 letter until after the May 27 WPCA meeting, even though his is “cc’d” on the letter.
King called the DEEP letter “vague” and said Derby engineers will be responding with “questions upon questions” trying to figure it out. King indicated Derby has to predict the future while reading DEEP’s mind.
“It’s really kind of a bizarre request and it’s also completely impractical,” he said.
Carolyn Duhaime, a member of the Derby WPCA, wondered if she had wandered into a parallel universe.
She questioned how the DEEP letter translated into the WPCA abandoning its plan to deal with a important piece of failing equipment at the sewage treatment plant. She said the plan and the $56 fee discussed last month made sense.
“Am I at a different meeting?” she asked.
