NOTICE TO ALL WINTERPORT WATER DISTRICT SEWER CUSTOMERS

We are writing to inform you of an important regulatory issue that has the potential of affecting all sewer customers of the Winterport Water District. As you know, the District operates a wastewater treatment plant on Sampson Street that was constructed in 1984 to process sewage flows from Winterport's village area. The plant removes organic pollutants from the wastewater utilizing a primary clarifier sedimentation process. Primary clarifiers remove pollutants by gravity settling.

The Clean Water Act, as passed by Congress in 1976, required all communities to construct wastewater treatment plants that provide secondary biological treatment of their wastewater. Secondary treatment is a step beyond primary settling that removes additional organic pollutants by growing bacteria that biodegrade these materials. The secondary process is much more complex than primary treatment and costs more to build and operate.

There are about 15,000 municipal wastewater treatment plants in the United States and nearly all of them provide a secondary level of treatment. When these plants were constructed, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allowed about fifty plants in the entire country, of which fifteen were in Maine, to install only primary treatment systems instead of more costly secondary treatment. Winterport's plant was one of those primary plants. The decision by EPA to allow primary treatment was based on the fact that Winterport's low wastewater flow when treated to a primary level would have no adverse impacts on water quality in the Penobscot River due to its large tidal volume. In general, all fifty treatment plants that were given waivers of secondary treatment were located in coastal areas and discharged into large bodies of tidal water.

In 1987, Congress amended the Clean Water Act to prohibit primary treatment discharges into any coastal water that is classified as a marine estuary. An estuary is a body of water where fresh river water mixes with salt water from the ocean. Estuaries provide a unique habitat for aquatic life and are allowed special protection under the law. EPA has not enforced this provision of the Clean Water Act until just recently.

The Winterport Water District recently received a letter from EPA advising that the treatment plant will no longer be allowed to operate as a primary facility. This will force the District to upgrade the present treatment plant to the secondary level. Such an upgrade will be very expensive and will potentially cost millions of dollars with no appreciable benefit to the Penobscot River's water quality.

The District has retained legal counsel from Maine's largest environmental law firm, Pierce-Atwood in Portland, to review EPA's tentative decision.  We have been advised that the law prohibiting the continued utilization of primary treatment on estuaries is very clear and will likely be futile to challenge. Portsmouth, New Hampshire recently lost a similar court case and is now being forced to upgrade its primary treatment plant to secondary treatment after spending a considerable amount of money on legal fees. The District has submitted comments to EPA stating why Winterport should be able to retain its waiver from secondary treatment.

The present treatment plant was constructed with a large amount of Federal and State grant money. The District has advised EPA and DEP that it is not in the financial position to comply with this law unless significant grant funds are provided. In initial discussions with DEP, the District has made it clear that it wants to comply with all applicable laws, but that any schedule for compliance needs to be contingent on receiving sufficient outside grant funding to make the project affordable to the 300 users of the Winterport sewer system. The District is presently working with representatives from Senator Susan Collins' and Representative Michael Michaud's offices at the Federal level and with Senator Carol Weston's and Representative Michael Thibodeau's office at the State level to identify potential funding sources. It is likely that the resolution of this issue will take several years.

The District will keep its sewer users informed of the status of this issue with additional mailers and a public hearing when appropriate.  In the meantime, please call the District's office at 223-5028 if you have any concerns or would like further information.