Gloucester Daily Times, May 8, 2006

Council, Bell to forge sewer policy

By Richard Gaines
Staff writer

The city's elected leaders get to work tomorrow forging plans for the future of the sewer system.
At 7 p.m., Mayor John Bell and members of his sewer task force go before the City Council, which has had three weeks to study the task force's report that was written and delivered to the mayor last August.
Bell took no action on the report then. At the start of his third term in January he began discussions with the task force on how to present its findings to the public and City Council.
The report recommends extending the Essex Avenue sewer line through three West Gloucester neighborhoods, not allowing private extensions of sewers, and a ban on tie-ins in Annisquam, Bay View and Lanesville.
The task force also recommended repealing the ordinance that guaranteed the city would pay for 25 percent of betterment fees on new sewer installations. The city has been paying $6,000 per tie-in since the construction of the sewer system along the upper Washington Street corridor.
The task force asserted that the city no longer could afford the subsidies.
Councilor and former Mayor Bruce Tobey last week said he expected the council to write the policy in "collaboration" with the mayor.
"The council will draft ordinances," said Tobey. "The council is going to take the lead."
It was on Tobey's mayoral watch that the city pushed the sewer system north to Rockport along Washington Street and west to Essex.
It was on Bell's watch that the city decided how to distribute betterment fees for the Essex Avenue line. The city argued that the two phases of the project -- the sewering of some Little River properties and others along western Essex Avenue -- were one. Both groups were charged the same betterment -- a bit more than $10,000.
That position was challenged in court by residents of Essex Avenue, who claim the town of Essex had paid for much of the work on their service.
The mayor endorsed the repeal of the 25 percent subsidy in meetings with the task force in January and February, but in a brief summary of the report to the council last month, neither he nor his Administrative Assistant Steven Magoon hinted at the mayor's position.
Tomorrow, according to Magoon, Bell will remain uncommitted to the recommendations. But Magoon said he expected Bell to send ordinances to the council at a later date.
Tobey said the city needed to decide quickly whether it intends to extend the Essex line up Walker Creek and the Jones River and further along the Little River, three enclaves where septic systems, many condemned by the Board of Health, have been polluting the Annisquam River estuary.
"How long do you think the (Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection) is going to sit on its hands?" Tobey said.
It was the DEP that ordered the city to bring the system up the east side of the Annisquam and urged the city to build the Essex Avenue line.
Bell delivered copies of the task force report to members of the City Council on April 18. He was responding to an order filed by Tobey after the Times' revealed the existence of the task force and its work.
The city is implementating a major task force recommendation that a facilities study be done to measure how much capacity the system has. The city intends to advertise for bidders to conduct the facilities study.
Council President James Destino has announced that the public will be allowed to participate in what he has termed a "workshop." Tobey said he hopes a coherent sewer policy can be created and approved by the end of the calendar year.
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