A long-planned effort to build a $4 million community wastewater system in Westford has been thrust into uncertainty after residents objected to the project.
Town officials said they had secured nearly all of the money and had already begun engineering work, but at a special town meeting earlier this month, residents voted 532-488 against providing the final funding piece — a $400,000 bond.
The treatment system, which would include building new sewer lines and a new leach field, would serve older municipal buildings in the town center, including the town offices and library, which officials say have failing 50-year-old systems.
It would also facilitate the creation of housing in the town center and promote more economic activity, according to town documents. The town website states that it would provide “enough wastewater capacity for all foreseeable residential and business development in and around the Town Center, including the potential for a market, shops, eatery, and moderately priced housing options.”
That’s cause for concern for some town residents, who like the rural nature of the small community of just over 2,000 residents, which currently relies on individual septic systems and has no municipal sewage treatment system. Some have objected on the grounds that it could lay the groundwork for further development, which they worry would destroy the town common.
Former selectboard member Ira Allen, who lives “barely south of the common” and owns two of the properties that could hook up to the new system, said he voted against the bond. While wastewater might be a positive for properties there, he said he is worried about undesirable development and congestion in and around the common.
According to the town’s planning commission, which has been working on the project since 2007, the town government had already secured $4 million, largely in the form of state and federal grants, for the project. The $400,000 bond would have covered extra costs.
The project was expected to be completed by 2027 and the tax impact would add $72 per year for a property valued at $300,000, according to materials from the planning commission.
So far, 30% of the preliminary engineering contracted for the project has been completed. Amy Macrellis from Stone Environmental, the Montpelier-based consultant hired by the town, said last week the contract stipulates they are not to go past 30% of the work without the results of the bond vote.
While the wastewater project has been discussed for years, there had never been a townwide vote on the plan until earlier this month. Some — including the selectboard — considered the recent vote a referendum on the project, not just a funding mechanism. But that’s left officials perplexed about how to proceed.
“We believed from the beginning and all the way through that the vote was a referendum on the project itself,” Lee McClenny, chair of the selectboard, told VTDigger.
“It’s very, very complicated,” he said. “On one hand, a no vote means no and the project has to stop. Except, we want to do right by the town.”
It is possible that some work could continue, McClenny said, but, he added, no one wants to start down “some sort of slippery slope that might lead us to someplace that is contrary to the will of the people, which so far is opposed.”
At the planning commission’s monthly meeting last week, which turned testy during public comment, George Lamphere, the planning commission chair, declined to give a clear answer on where the project stands.
“I see this as a period of pause. There’s no need to issue stop work orders. There’s no need to issue aggressive marching orders to proceed with gusto,” he said in response to residents’ questions.
Becky Roy, a town resident who spoke at the meeting, said she found it “really frustrating” the commission keeps talking about moving ahead on the project when the voters have said no.
Lamphere reiterated they are in a waiting period and mentioned the possibility of holding a new vote on the same article, but no petition for what’s called a “reconsideration vote” had been submitted as of Wednesday morning. The deadline for submitting one would be Dec. 7, according to the town clerk.
“We do not believe that, just because you don’t like the results of an election, you should be allowed to call for another election,” said Carol Winfield, a resident who voted against the bond.
At last week’s meeting she said she supported the need for a new system but would prefer alternatives to the current plan. “This project is just too big for the size of this town,” she said in an email, adding that it would only serve about 30 of the 980 taxpaying properties in Westford.
“I think this whole situation has been a top down issue,” Allen told VTDigger. “Somebody somewhere decided that here’s some free money and by golly we’re going to put in a wastewater system.”
It would’ve felt a lot better if the town had started it by talking to the people involved first, he said, adding, “I wish it would all go away.”
The Nov. 7 vote drew a record voter turnout in Westford, showing that residents think the wastewater project “is not the most efficient or fiscally responsible solution,” said Barbara Peck, who voted against the bond and also raised concerns at last week’s meeting.
Residents who oppose the project say the planning commission has not answered all the questions people have about the project, nor provided alternatives to the current proposal.
Documents available on the town’s website date back to a 2008 feasibility study considering alternatives of community wastewater disposal in Westford. Of the 78 parcels in the study area, 42 could support an on-site disposal system at the time, the report stated.
“In light of the limited feasibility that a community wastewater disposal solution could be designed at a cost that the Town would find reasonable,” several alternative strategies for managing wastewater were suggested at the time. A 2022 study also examined alternate sites.
Planning commission members said last week the project has been amply discussed in community presentations preceding the vote.
Paul Birnholz, a former chair of the planning commission, told VTDigger he thinks the current commission is acting like “a rogue group, just doing what they want at this point,” and
“acting like they don’t really care what the vote was.”
He said he supports having wastewater treatment and has land nearby that could hook up to it and be developed some day. But he said he couldn’t vote yes because of the way it was worded and he felt he didn’t have enough information about it.
Lamphere, the current chair, declined to answer specific questions but said in a brief email that the commission would “pick this topic back up in December.” The commission’s next meeting is on Dec. 12.
In an email to VTDigger, Lamphere pointed to a website called Westford’s Future, which promotes the current plan and, he said, was created by the commission. Opposing residents have come up with their own portal, Keeping Westford Rural, which also provides links to resources with commentary discussing the project’s long term effects.
While residents have strong feelings about the project, as recent meetings show, McClenny said what’s often overlooked is that “the strong feelings for ‘no’ are grounded in the same thing … a sincere love for this town and the desire to do right by it.”
