Buckfield Water Company to seek $525,000 loan

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.”