FARMINGTON — Selectmen will listen to comments about a proposed public wellhead protection ordinance during a hearing on Tuesday, April 23.

The board meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Municipal Building in an executive session with legal counsel concerning the rights and duties of the board with respect to a personnel matter.

The public hearing on the ordinance follows the executive session.

Although the town has a wellhead protection ordinance in effect which was enacted in 2004, questions were raised during discussions last year on the Brookside Village project located on Fairbanks Road, Town Manager Richard Davis said.

Brookside Village is a 32-unit apartment building for low-income seniors at the site of the former Maine Dowel Mill. Groundbreaking for the project is expected to begin within the next few weeks.

When the Brookside Village project came before the town’s Planning Board, a property abutter raised concerns about a proposal to use a small pond on the property as a wet pond — a method of treating surface runoff water. The pond is located within the department’s wellhead protection zone.

The town’s water department, Farmington Village Corporation, reached an agreement in September on a monitoring well with the developers, William Marceau and Byron Davis.

But the water department and town’s Planning Board took a look at wellhead protection and developed a more detailed ordinance — one that will replace the previous ordinance when enacted.

It’s not an ordinance that comes in to play very often, Davis said.

But it is one that “protects the town’s public water supply from land uses which pose a threat to the quality and/or quantity of the groundwater being extracted from the wells.”

The ordinance will need to be adopted by voters during a town meeting, probably a special town meeting held this summer, Davis said.

In other business, the board will consider a plan to replace retiring Wastewater Superintendent Steve Moore and review the proposed sewer department budget.

They will also discuss plans for the 150-year celebration at the University of Maine at Farmington with President Kathryn Foster.

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