NEWRY – Contrary to a letter read at last week’s Planning Board meeting, Sunday River Ski Resort isn’t in danger of losing its wastewater-treatment plant discharge license, officials said.
Instead, the resort has been working with the Department of Environmental Protection to resolve the system’s issues and prepare for future development, spokeswoman Susan DuPlessis said Tuesday.
“We’re working with an engineer and the DEP, and taking steps to ensure that we’re always in compliance,” DuPlessis said.
She said plans are in the very early stages for a $3 million to $5 million upgrade to increase treatment plant capacity for future growth.
“We’re looking far down the road at development opportunities,” DuPlessis said.
At the May 18 Planning Board meeting, Chairman Joseph Aloisio read a letter from Charlene Brogan, a member of the Brookside Condominium Association board of directors.
Brogan protested a proposed deck expansion on the Phoenix House and Well restaurant, stating that, in her opinion, the expansion would contribute to more influent to the system’s three sewage disposal lagoons because of additional seating capacity.
Planners disagreed.
But they were surprised at Brogan’s additional comments that “the water treatment system is at or over capacity, according to the Department of Environmental Protection,” and that the resort “is in danger of losing its license to operate.”
DuPlessis and Steve Arnold of Portland, the resort’s DEP compliance inspector, disagree.
Arnold said Tuesday afternoon that Sunday River’s system, which has been in place since the mid-1980s, has been in compliance all year.
“I can’t see us taking their license away,” he said.
It’s his job, he said, to ensure that the treatment system remains in compliance with its wastewater discharge license.
During the past winter, a problem loomed regarding an overload of organic matter. However, Arnold said, the resort reduced the amount of solids to stay in compliance.
DuPlessis said the resort did this by asking owners of the system’s 950 condominium units and hotel rooms, and about 15 single-family residents in a development behind the Phoenix, to remove their garbage disposals.
“It wasn’t a mandate. It was a laying out of the situation, and asking them to help us. One of the big issues we had was dairy products going into the system, because it delayed the breakdown of solids,” she said.
Brogan stated in her letter that Brookside and other condominiums voted to remove all the garbage disposals, which were an original feature of the units. Doing so cost Brookside, which has 144 condo units, $50 per unit, or $7,200.
To date, DuPlessis said that 185 garbage disposals have been removed since the program began in January.
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