LIVERMORE FALLS — Major improvements are planned for more than a mile of Route 17 over the next two years, supported by $15 million in state and federal funding to rebuild the road to meet federal highway safety standards.
Plans call for the Maine Department of Transportation project to extend from Shuy Corner — where Route 17 meets Route 133 — north along Park Street to its junction with Route 4.
Reconstruction of the roadway has prompted the Livermore Falls Water District and the town’s Sewer Department to schedule their own improvements.
At a public hearing in early November, Sewer Superintendent Mark Holt said a company hired to run a camera through more than 40 sections of sewer lines in the project area found 25 were considered collapsing. The affected lines include the old storm drain system, Holt said, which was installed in the 1930s and 1940s.
“If the MDOT project comes through, replacing their infrastructure,” Holt said, “and they start compacting, our sewer lines will collapse.”
To address the issue, the town has proposed borrowing up to $2.35 million to replace or reline 1.3 miles of sewer line and reconstruct 30 manholes. The upgrades are expected to extend the system’s life by another 50 years.
A separate $2.2 million project by the Livermore Falls Water District, largely funded through grants and loan forgiveness, is expected to address those utilities.
Holt and other town officials said they plan to continue seeking grant funding to support the $2.35 million project, but the current plan is to borrow from the State Revolving Loan Fund. Holt said he is confident as much as $1 million could be forgiven.
At a special town meeting Nov. 13, residents rejected an amendment to allocate nothing for the project and then turned to the central issue: how to fund 30 years of local debt service.
The Select Board proposed splitting the $82,000 in annual payments, with sewer ratepayers covering 60 percent and the remainder funded through the property tax rate.
The latter part of the proposal proved to be the sticking point for many at the special town meeting. Several attendees argued the town had not helped them with clearing septic tanks or drainage fields and said sewer ratepayers should bear the full cost of the project, regardless of its importance.
“We would be foolish to turn down this project that Mr. Holt and his people put together. It makes great sense,” resident L. Gary Knight said. “But it does not make sense to have those who are not on that line paying for it.”
Voters at the meeting overwhelmingly approved adding language to the article requiring that debt service be paid entirely by ratepayers. Town Manager Carrie Castonguay confirmed in an email that the amendment was permissible under the meeting’s open‑article format and said the board would follow the will of the voters.
“As directed by the legislative body, the funds for the payment will be generated by the sewer users,” Castonguay wrote.
She noted that initial bond payments are at least a couple of years away.
Based on an annual average use of 6,500 cubic feet of water, the project could increase the typical sewer bill from $989 to $1,093.
The increase comes after two years of rising sewer rates in town, most recently a 7.8 percent increase as advised by a new feature for the department: a budget.
“We are trying to get there,” Holt said at the public hearing. “For 52 years, the Sewer Department did not have a budget. For the last two years, we’ve had a budget. We know what we’re spending, we know where it’s going and we know what we have to raise to cover our costs, for both our debt service, our operation and maintenance and capital projected going forward.”
Holt noted that an auditor recommended about 20 years ago that the department raise rates 30 percent to cover operations and maintenance. Instead, the rate was increased roughly 8 percent and then left unchanged for years.
Holt told those at the public hearing that the department must plan for the future.
“We haven’t done that in this town and it’s gotten us into a pickle,” he said. “This is the pickle we’re in.”
