RUMFORD — The Select Board voted 5-0 on Feb. 6 that the town’s assessment from the Rumford/Mexico Sewerage District will not change this calendar year.

That action comes about six months after the same board voted to approve a new sewer rate formula that Town Manager George O’Keefe said would be more equitable for the estimated 3,100 users of the system.

The assessment will maintain the sewer rate of $600 per unit, and a charge of 12.5 cents over and above the first 1,200 cubic feet per quarter.

O’Keefe said, “1,200 cubic feet per quarter represents the rough usage of a household of about 1.5 people.

Roland Arsenault, superintendent of Rumford-Mexico Sewer District, said 1,200 cubic feet equals 8,976 gallons of water.

O’Keefe said, “I must admit, a high degree of satisfaction that what we are doing right now with the sewer rate, the way that it is working, seems to be very successful.”

Last August, he said that with meters to measure the flow rate from the two largest users of the system — ND Paper and Rumford Power — “will ensure that residents who pay their own sewer bill and are on the lowest possible level of usage will have the lowest possible sewer bill, where currently under our flat rate system, residents are effectively paying to cover the overuse of the sewer system by others.

“And the result of that means that because we previously have been billing on a flat rate, if flows were increased, or if there were high flows from individual users, we had no mechanism to bill them for their higher use or overuse, as the case may be, of the sewer system,” he said.

Prior to the new formula, O’Keefe said everybody, collectively, was carrying all the other users who had higher flows. That could include multifamily units, a single-family home where there might be a lot of residents, and a lot of industrial customers as well.

“This will be a much more equitable system where people are actually paying really for the use of the sewer system,” he said.