Mashpee Selectmen Send Sewer Construction Project to Town Meeting Mashpee residents at Town Meeting on May 3 will have the opportunity to vote to begin construction on a sewer system that is part of the town’s long-delayed plan to remediate nitrogen pollution in local embayments.
M
ashpee Board of Selectmen voted unanimously at their virtual meeting on Monday, March 22, to approve and recommend passage of a Town Meeting article that will request a $54 million debt exclusion for the construction of a wastewater treatment plant and adjoined sewer system. Another unanimous vote by the selectmen executed the Town Meeting warrant. “We’re finally in a situation where we’re ready,” said John J. Cotton, the chairman of the selectmen. “We have our financing and our financial structure prepared to have very minimal costs to the townspeople.” To pass, the debt exclusion, which is not expected to result in any tax increases, will require a twothirds majority at Town Meeting and a majority vote of a ballot question at the May 8 annual election. The project will include the construction of a wastewater treatment facility adjacent to the Mashpee transfer station, a sewer system stretching west along Route 28 to Quinaquisset Avenue and south down Orchard Road and part of Mashpee Neck Road, and two pump stations. The wastewater project constitutes phase one of Mashpee’s five-phase Comprehensive Watershed Nitrogen Management Plan. The plan, which the town finalized more than five years ago, contemplates using sewer systems as the primary means of remediating nitrogen pollution that causes annual algae blooms, ecological damage, and potential recreational closures in the town’s embayments. The first phase of the project will not include a
APRIL, 2021
sewer pipe stretching the length of Meetinghouse Road toward Town Hall, as the comprehensive plan had originally laid out. “It was recommended to the sewer commission last week by [the project engineers] that that area be dropped from this phase,” said Selectman Andrew R. Gottlieb. “There are very few service connections per mile of pipe because there is a lot of open space that is tribal housing lands, and so you travel a long distance to not get very many service connections.” Rather than increase the cost of the first phase by an additional $12 million to reach the service area near Town Hall, “we’ll probably look at taking a different route” to the area during a later phase of sewering,” Mr. Gottlieb said. The first phase of the wastewater project will receive financing through a variety of sources that mitigate the need for further tax increases. The town has a dedicated Wastewater Infrastructure Investment Fund that was established at Town Meeting last fall, as well as funds from a local short-term rental tax. In January, the state gave the project a high rank on a draft intended use plan for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, a program that would provide 2 percent interest loans for the entire cost of the project and 3.3 percent principal forgiveness on those loans. To qualify for the low-interest loans, Mashpee voters will have to approve the construction of the continued on page 65
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