LETTER TO THE EDITOR: So Many Unanwered Questions on Sewers, OLWPCA Member Urges Community to Get Involved

To the Editor:

I recently volunteered to join the OLWPCA [Old Lyme Water Pollution Control Authority] because I wanted to serve my community and the town.

 I was hoping that I could help decipher for my neighbors and friends the ambiguity regarding 10-year-old testing, affordable alternatives and ever-increasing project costs. I wanted to learn all I can, but it seems the more we hear, the less we understand. The issues are huge!

 Sewers have become the hot topic on the beach, at the coffee shops and all over town.

 As a WPCA member and a resident of Old Lyme I would like to provide my neighbors with answers to their questions. I cannot! My neighbors and I read the local news and listen to meetings and do our best to stay informed. But there seems to be so much that we still don’t know.

We know Miami Beach bids will be in early to mid August, but Old Lyme Shores has not even set a date yet to go out to bid. They both are supposedly going to be a part of the project. What if they don’t join in? Who pays for their potentially applicable shares of this project? I understand that the OLWPCA Chair is proposing town meetings and referendums for late August and early September, I wonder why, since significant financial factors to the Town may not be clarified by then.

We hear there is still uncertainty regarding the Cost Sharing Agreement [CSA}. The OLWPCA Chair tells us that the WPCA’s are reviewing and discussing the CSA.

I cannot do what I hoped to do as a member of the OLWPCA. I cannot help my community understand the why, the when or how much this project will cost them. I cannot tell them if it is ‘affordable’. Clearly there is a goal to make this project sound affordable in order to meet the state’s 2% income guideline. My concern is that this ambitious goal will result in many expenses that should beconsidered part of the build and incorporated therefore also in the ‘EDU’ value, will be pushed under the blanket of usage and maintenance. If included as part of the build costs, the entire project could ultimately be construed as UN-affordable! As residents of the beach communities under the gun to get sewers, un-affordability (which many of us already think it is) is very true. We are potentially looking at tens of thousands of dollars in costs! I don’t have that kind of money … do you?

Contractual fees to New London and East Lyme, are not usage. The estimated $700,000 that I think we may owe for bridge work, is not usage. The $100,000 in easements, is not usage. Change orders already identified (before a shovel even goes into the ground), are not usage. Whatever has already been spent in legal fees, consultants, etc., by the OLWPCA and or by Old Colony in regard to the Shared infrastructure, are not usage. Frankly I cannot see how any project expense incurred at this point can be categorized as usage since there has been no usage!  That changes the affordability of the project.

My opinion and that of many is that the Town should take the lead and demand an audit of what the OLWPCA, both past and present and Old Colony with respect to the “Shared group” have spent to date, how much is owed and how much is projected to be owed. My opinion and that of others is that the Town should not move forward without that information.

Come to WPCA and Selectmen’s meetings and speak up, please.

Sincerely,

Brian Cornell,
Old Lyme.