Sudbury Town Officials Promote Sewer Project to Business Leaders

At a gathering of the Chamber of Commerce at the on Tuesday evening, Sudbury Planning and Community Development Director Jody Kablack was on hand to explain the town’s plan to build a sewer system for Sudbury’s main business district.

“We have taken the project to a point where we have a feasibility analysis completed and we know that we can build a sewer system,” said Kablack, who explained that this milestone had been elusive ever since the town began considering the project 40 years ago. “So we are kind of in a rush education mode right now. We are trying to get a lot of information out in a short amount of time.”

Specifically, the proposed project would include all business and residential properties that front Boston Post Road from approximately Massasoit Avenue to Lafayette Drive, as well as properties on the southern portion of Union Avenue. A treatment facility would be located at 641 Boston Post Road, and wastewater would be piped up Horse Pond Road to the field in front of for leaching.

At the annual Town Meeting on May 2, an article will be considered requesting an initial $1 million from the town’s taxpayers to complete a detailed design for the project. After that, an estimated $14 million would be needed to fund the actual construction, which would likely take place over a two-year period from 2013 to 2015. This larger sum could potentially be funded by all Sudbury taxpayers, by just the property owners who would use the system, or by some combination of both.

In a letter sent to town business leaders by the Route 20 Sewer Technical Advisory Committee on April 7, Committee Chair Lisa Eggleston summarized the potential advantages a sewer system could have for them.

“Installing a decentralized wastewater treatment system along the corridor would eliminate the costly financial burden of frequent septic system repairs, create opportunities for new tenants, allow property owners to reinvest and redevelop their properties knowing that potential increased wastewater would be managed effectively, and allow the corridor to better compete with surrounding commercial areas,” she said.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Kablack added that another important goal of the project is to protect the water supply, given that 60 percent of the town’s drinking water comes from wells behind , where ground water quality could become an issue long term.

During a brief question and answer session at the end of the meeting, audience reaction was mixed, with some welcoming the initiative and others expressing concern about whether the benefits would truly outweigh the costs. One attendee, who worried that the proposed sewer system wouldn’t extend far enough since the businesses on the eastern end of Boston Post Road would be excluded, asked whether the effort might entail a phase two.

“I don’t expect to work on this project for the next 40 years,” joked Kablack, “so no, probably not.”

She elaborated that feasibility studies had indicated that this portion of town was too topographically distinct and geographically distant from the rest of the target area to be reasonably included.

Additional information on the sewer system project will be posted on Sudbury’s town website as it becomes available.