WILTON – Selectmen voted unanimously Tuesday night to permit the water and wastewater departments to spend up to $18,000 to buy a pumping station and other items.
Russ Mathers, superintendent of both departments, notified selectmen that the state’s Department of Transportation intends to replace a box culvert on Main Street near Webb Road in early July. A 100-foot-long section of Main Street will be torn up to accommodate the project, which will also affect a manhole, two water mains and a sewer main that run above the culvert. The state owns the rotting culvert, but the town is responsible for the mains and manhole, all of which will be disturbed during construction. The town is required to foot the bill for replacing these items as part of the project.
But the most disturbing part to Mathers is the possible interruption of water and sewer service to more than 90 nearby homes, he said. The town will need to provide temporary service to those residents, which if done by private contractor would cost up to $1,600 daily, or more than $20,000. The construction project is expected to last at least 10 days, according to Mathers, not including weekends.
Mathers credited Clayton Putnam, a maintenance worker with the department, for suggesting the purchase, for about $10,630, of a portable pumping station that could be used elsewhere in town later.
This way, said Mathers, the town would have something to show for spending the money other than “a pile of bills.” The total cost to the town for the pumping station and materials for the project is expected to at be least $15,500 without labor.
Selectmen also approved the purchase of a new truck for the water department for less than $17,000.
With these purchases paid from the budgets of both departments, Mathers said they will be hard-pressed to fund any additional projects this year.
Selectmen also held a public hearing regarding houseboats on Wilson Lake. Friends of Wilson Lake presented selectmen with a proposed ordinance regulating the use of such boats on the lake. According to the proposal, a live-aboard boat is defined as having a kitchen, toilet and sleeping quarters. The ordinance would not affect pontoon-type party boats.
It would require that all live-aboard boats be secured overnight “to a commercial facility capable of dealing with waste and fueling.”
However, no such facility currently exists on the lake, so a houseboat would not be permitted to stay on the water overnight. The proposal is intended to regulate potential sewage disposal and gasoline spills on the lake, according to a committee representative. A similar but more complex measure failed at town meeting last year.
Members of the committee who wrote the proposal spoke to the merits of limiting lake use to protect the resource.
Dan Buckley, an ecology professor from the University of Maine at Farmington, said he owns no waterfront property but is still concerned with water quality issues.
“This is a reasonable ordinance that addresses a narrow problem,” he said in its defense.
“This is the most immediate threat to Wilson Lake,” agreed Selectman Russell Black, though he believed, as did others, that more than live-aboard boats needed to be addressed.
Selectmen voted 4-1 to deny a proposal for a commercial snack bar in Kineowatha Park. Pamela Henderson had hoped to open the enterprise this summer, but selectmen felt it would set a bad precedent. But they had no problem, they said, if the local Little League wanted to run a concession stand during their games to raise money, the group being nonprofit.
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