OXFORD – Concerns arose at Thursday’s night’s selectmen’s meeting about the possible shutoff of electrical power to the Robinson Mills wastewater treatment plant as early as next week.

The facility takes the effluent from several buildings in Oxford Village, including the town hall, the post office and a four-duplex building owned by mill owner John Robinson Jr.

“We know the duplexes can’t go for more than a day,” Town Manager Michael Chammings told the board.

Chammings said if the power is shut off, the town hall could be self sustaining on its own pump system, but effluent from four duplexes on King Street would most likely overflow unless it was manually pumped.

“Someone could manually pump the sewage from the duplex to a holding tank for the foreseeable future using a generator, but they couldn’t do anything about the aerator,” which means gases would build up quickly and stink out tenants, Chammings said.

With the possible shutdown of electrical service and the subsequent loss of sewer pump capability to the duplexes, Chammings said either the town or DEP could order the owner to fix it within 24 hours or order an evacuation of the building for health reasons if the connection is lost. Chammings said he will meet with DEP officials on Monday.

Meanwhile, selectmen agreed Thursday night to hire an engineer to conduct a feasibility study on the Robinson Mill wastewater treatment facility as a step toward the possible $1 purchase of the facility by the town.

Chammings said Friday the move is being made as part of the information gathering process to inform the public at a future public hearing. Once the public hearing is held, officials will set a town meeting or referendum vote to let residents decide whether they want to purchase the facility. A letter of intent to sell the facility to the town was delivered by Robinson to the board last week.

If the town takes over the facility, it could operate a 600,000-gallon-a-day treatment facility for public use. Robinson’s permit as a private industrial sewer system allowed him to run only 50,000 gallons a day. The Department of Environmental Protection permit for the treatment facility operation expired in December because the mill is no longer used as a mill, but it had continued to run on the expired permit, said Chammings.

In March, the town foreclosed on the 7.5 acre property located near Thompson Lake after $244,920 in taxes went unpaid over the last three years. The property also includes a three-story brick mill building, dam and other buildings assessed at $3.8 million. The mill, which started operation in the 1860s, closed in 2003.

Robinson, a state legislator from Raymond and a sixth-generation member of the Robinson mill family, presented a plan to town officials in 2007 to convert the mill to residential and commercial uses, including a restaurant, retail shops and 64 living units for about $14 million. But economic conditions have thwarted that effort.