Town To Halt Future Sewer Construction Work

From the Town of Coventry: Recently, there has been a lot of furor over the Town’s Sewer Facilities Plan and impending sewer construction projects. Most of the feedback that the Town has received from its resident’s deals with the costs that would be borne by those residents required to hook into the sewer system when it is constructed. What we have heard is that residents don’t have the financial means to take on this encumbrance and that it is an undue hardship on them.

In 2016, when the then Town Council agreed to begin construction again of the sewer system they never had the intention of this project being a hardship for the residents, and did not embark on continuing with the sewer facilities plan to mandate residents sacrifice more than what they are already being asked through town, state and fire district taxes. The Town maintains that the draft legislation proposed by the Coventry state delegation will only make it more difficult to have a financially sustainable sewer program and ultimately lead the program into bankruptcy and require taxes be raised.

In light of this, and after consultation with the Town Council, I am making a recommendation to the Town Council to review the Town’s Sewer Facilities Plan before moving forward on any more sewer development projects. The Town Council will entertain a resolution asking the Town Manager cease any future work on the Town’s sewer projects and look into an appropriate place to stop construction of the sewer line on Hazard Street. In addition, the Town will look at inserting socioeconomic data into its facilities plan so that the staff and elected officials can consider this when making the decision on which areas of Town to sewer in the future. Finally, the Town’s sewer engineer, Weston and Sampson, will be surveying the areas of Town within the facility plan to see where residents want sewers, and provide that to the Town in considering where to focus on developing future sewer infrastructure.

Hopefully this pause and review period will allow everyone to take a step back and bring regular order and decorum back to the Town. This will also allow the Town to incorporate the recent feedback it has received from its residents to make improvements in how we communicate the build out of sewers and other related assistance information to the public, as well as changes to the sewer ordinance that have been promoted.

Image courtesy of the Town of Coventry