AUBURN — Maine Public Utilities Commission staff has recommended against a complaint aimed at the Lake Auburn Watershed Protection Commission and its policies of buying up land around the lake and putting limits on development.

PUC staff investigating the complaint filed by watershed resident Dan Bilodeau and 13 other Auburn residents found that the watershed protection group acted reasonably. Investigators recommended that the PUC dismiss the complaint once and for all.

Bilodeau said he has until Aug. 9 to file a comment on the staff recommendation. An official commission decision is expected after that.

“If anything, this has been an awareness for us,” Bilodeau said. “It goes into moving forward into the future with a positive relationship going forward, not just for ratepayers but taxpayers as well.”

The Auburn complaint was signed by Bilodeau and 13 other Auburn residents. It includes City Councilors Mike Farrell, Dan Herrick, Ray Berube and Belinda Gerry, former City Councilors Ron Potvin, Bob Mennealy and Donna Lyons Rowell, City Council candidate Leroy Walker Sr., former Auburn School Committee member Jason Pawlina and residents Joan Godbout, Stephen Martelli, George Matthews and Dan Poisson.

Overall, Bilodeau said the effect of his complaint has been positive. Watershed officials are beginning to talk to the city and watershed residents and that didn’t happen before.

“It’s gone beyond me and the concerns I’ve had to the others that are involved,” Bilodeau said. “I’m an optimist, and I’m going to stay optimistic and maybe we can work together.

Bilodeau said the decision doesn’t bode well for a parallel complaint filed weeks later by Doug Stone and residents from Lewiston. The Lewiston and Auburn complaints are functionally the same.

But while Bilodeau said he understood the staff’s recommendation, Stone vowed to fight on.

“This is not over,” Stone said. “He had every support and evidence. It just might not have been poetically put down.”

The complaints argue that watershed commission actions unreasonably limit recreational access to Lake Auburn, unreasonably restrict development, support unreasonable septic system rules for watershed residents, buy up too much land and communicate amongst themselves improperly.

The watershed commission was formed 18 years ago, created by the Auburn Water District and the city of Lewiston’s water department to protect the lake’s water quality.

Through the commission, the Twin Cities’ water utilities pay to protect the land around the lake and tributaries that feed it from development. It has also worked with the city of Auburn to develop development rules around the lake and use rules for the lake water.

The cities were granted a federal waiver in 1991, deeming Lake Auburn’s water clean enough to avoid having to pay to filter it.

Bilodeau’s complaint argues the costs associated with keeping that filtration waiver may be higher than Auburn residents and water district ratepayers understand and would be realistically willing to pay.

For example, the city requires septic systems around Lake Auburn to be buried in at least 36 inches of undisturbed topsoil. That makes building septic systems too expensive and development around the lake too difficult, some say.

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