OXFORD — Delays in the town’s $23.7 million sewer system have pushed the project’s completion back until at least the spring of 2016. 

In the meeting minutes of a conference with contractors, the firm building the town’s sewer plant — T. Buck Construction — isn’t projected to finish before late February 2016. 

Town Manager Michael Chammings clarified that additional tests will be needed after construction to ensure the system is working properly. An estimated operational date was not known. 

After being originally slated to open this spring, the project has suffered previous pushbacks in its launch date, which was projected until recently at the end of 2015. 

Last month, engineers building the plant’s foundation requested an extension on their target completion date as crews were hampered by heavy snowfalls and cold temperatures for several months. That extension has had a domino effect on other phases of the project, Chammings said. 

T. Buck is scheduled to begin an $8.6 million phase of the project on April 1, though Chammings noted that the company constructing the foundation will return to waterproof and seal concrete. 

Last April, Oxford received $23.7 million in federal cash from the Department of Agriculture to complete the project. The town intends to pay back construction loans it has secured for the project with the funding, $10.4 million of which is in the form of a grant. 

The town intends to repay its loan obligations with funds tapped from businesses in its Tax Increment Financing District, wherein a portion of the revenue derived through property development is set aside for infrastructure improvements. 

As the principal business currently under proposal — the Hampton Inn hotel — is looking to time completion with the sewer system, it is not expected that revenue from its trapped taxes will become available until after the hotel is completed. 

At the town’s selectmen’s meeting Thursday evening, Chammings said he does not believe delays in the sewer system will impact the town’s ability to repay federal government loans.

“We’re in good financial shape,” Chammings said. “I’m not losing sleep over it.” 

Wastewater will be pumped to the facility through miles of sewer pipes along Route 26, where membrane filters will slough off solid wastes. From there, it will be sterilized by an ultraviolet light before being discharged into the Little Androscoggin River.