BUCKFIELD – In order to
obtain a $425,000 grant from Rural Development, customers of the Buckfield
Village Corporation have voted to approve seeking a loan of $525,000.
The Buckfield Village
Corporation, known locally as simply, “the water company,” is a quasi-municipal
organization that provides water from North Pond to 185 homes clustered around
the village center.
Although all customers of the
water company are eligible to vote at trustee’s meetings, only 13 were present
to approve seeking the loan.
Over the coming year, the
water company expects to use these funds to rebuild nearly one mile of water
pipe through the center of Buckfield village.
The Maine Department of Transportation, which has begun a project to
rebuild that road, reportedly will not undertake any construction within the
town center until water mains are rebuilt.
The existing water lines,
some originally laid in 1905, run along Route 117 from the offices of Oxford
Networks on the western side of the village, stopping just short of the Nezinscot
River bridge on the eastern side.
Superintendent Lewis
Williams, who is also in charge of the Hebron water company, stated that, based
on the income survey, Buckfield normally should have qualified for a funding
formula from Rural Development that would have seen a split of 75 percent in
grants and 25 percent in loans. However,
as he explained to those present, “money is gone in the program.”
Because of this lack of
available federal funds, Rural Development instead offered a 45/55 split on the
approved funding for the project.
The customer’s present were
willing to approve obtaining the $525,000 loan even though Williams was unable
to state what impact the loan would have on customer bills.
“What I can tell you,”
Williams said, “is in Hebron we got a loan for about this amount, and out
annual payment is about $32,000 a year.”
Williams stated that his
difficulty in “plugging in the numbers” arose from the fact that customers in
Buckfield are not charged a flat rate for service, as in Hebron, but are
charged a variable rate depending on the number of faucets and toilets in the
home.
Williams stated that the
water company does hope to use the Rural Development funding to also extend the
water mains along Route 140 as far as John D. Long American Legion Post
58. This will allow developer Gene Bell
to tie in the roughly one dozen new house lots from his subdivision beside the
Buckfield Junior/ Senior High School, resulting in additional revenues for the
corporation.
Still, even with the grant,
and the promise of new customers, water company trustees still anticipate going
to the Maine Public Utilities Commission in the coming year for a rate
increase.
With the vote to accept the
Rural Development funding, the project now needs to be approved by the Maine
Public Utilities Commission. Pine Tree
Engineering of Bath has already completed plans for the project.
Requests for bids to rebuild
the water lines will go out to contractors “as soon as possible.”
