Paris poised for $8 million water treatment upgrade

PARIS — Now that the Paris Utility District (PUD) has wrapped up the first phase of a planned $10 million upgrade to its wastewater treatment plant, it’s ready to launch into the middle, and costliest, portion of the project.

In preparation for that, Paris selectmen have called a public hearing on an application for a $500,000 public infrastructure grant through the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD).  That money will help fund computer, heating and pump station upgrades to the 33-year-old headworks facility.

That hearing is set for 7 p. m. on Monday, January 12, at the town office.

In April, PUD received $8 million in grants and low interest loans from the Rural Development program of the U. S. Department of Agriculture for “phase two.”

According to PUD manger Steve Arnold, the district hopes to obtain another $500,000 from DECD for what he’s termed, “phase 2A.” 

“This is a separate thing completely, from the actual upgrade to the plant itself,” he said.  “Essentially, this money is for repair and new instrumentation so that the pump stations will actually communicate with the treatment facility, so that we will know what’s going on at each individual location around town.”

Working in PUD’s favor as a grant recipient is the large number of low income households within its service area.  A November, 2006, survey showed that 58.1 percent of the people who live in the 1,217 year-round, residential homes hooked to Paris’ public water system meet the federal definition of low-to-moderate income (LMI).

Of 2,695 individuals living in the PUD service area, 1,565 live in homes earning less than 80 percent of the median income for Oxford County — $33,435.

The LMI data was extrapolated from a random door-to-door sampling of 420 homes, conducted by PUD staff and the Maine Rural Water Association.

To qualify for funding, at least 51 percent of the people in the area where the money is to be spent must qualify as LMI.

“The project will help limit future increases to sewer bills, benefiting LMI homeowners, and will help minimize “passed along” sewer costs to those LMI families living in rental units,” reads the grant application.

A required 25 percent match will be met with money “already obligated” to obtain the earlier USDA grant, says Arnold.

Previous operators were able to milk the system by making use of “spare parts” made available from a drop in usage after the A. C. Lawrence tannery shut down.

“It was pretty much going around and robbing Peter to pay Paul, but we’ve now scavenged all we can,” said Arnold, adding that he expects the PUD board to create and fund a capital reserve account to negate the need for future big-money projects in the future. 

“My thought is, we'll do this upgrade and then maintain the system as needed, and not just run it until it goes again,” he said.

Arnold says the cost of the complete project, expected to be complete by 2012, has been built into recent rate increases.  That means, he said, that the $8.5 million phase two project will not hit water bills.

“That’s still our plan at this point,” he said late last week.  “There won’t be any rate increases unless the economy goes into the can any more than what it has now.”