After years of discussion and months of technical planning, the Water & Sewer Authority (WSA) is poised to give its consulting engineering firm approval to draw the final plans for extending the Hawleyville sanitary sewer system.

The municipal facilities project is intended to foster economic development in the section of town near the Exit 9 interchange of Interstate 84.

Fred Hurley, town director of Public Works, said last week the WSA will consider and likely vote on the sewer planning topic when it meets at 7 pm on Thursday, February 5, at the sewage treatment plant office building at 24 Commerce Road.

Unlike the town’s central sewer system, which discharges its wastewater to the sewage treatment plant at 24 Commerce Road, the Hawleyville sewer system discharges its wastewater to the regional sewage treatment plant in Danbury.

At a town meeting last February, voters by an 81-11 margin approved borrowing $2.8 million to expand the Hawleyville sewer system as a means to spur local economic development.

The town has received approval for a $500,000 state grant that will be used toward the sewer expansion project.

Mr Hurley said that after receiving a WSA approval to draw the final plans, the engineering firm Fuss & O’Neill, Inc, would likely complete the planning work by late spring. Sewer system construction would start later this year.

So far, the owners of 18 to 20 properties in the Hawleyville area have expressed their intent to use the expanded sewer system for those properties, Mr Hurley said.

Unlike a conventional gravity-powered sewer system, the Hawleyville sewer system extension would be operated with the use of grinder pumps, he said. Such devices propel wastewater under low-pressure through narrow-diameter lines. A system powered by grinder pumps can be constructed faster and more simply than a conventional sewer system.

Among the major users expected to connect to the expanded sewer system is the mobile home park known as Midway Home Estates at 160 Mt Pleasant Road (Route 6). The site holds approximately 25 mobile homes.

As part of the sewer system expansion, sewer users would need to sign some final documents committing them to using the system, whether their properties are currently developed, or are undeveloped and planned for future growth. Those documents also would commit the property owners to paying the capital costs and operating costs for sewers.

Last May, WSA members held an informational session to explain the sewer system expansion project, as well as seek commitments for sewer connections from property owners who own land along the planned sewer route.

Because the Hawleyville sewer expansion project is keyed to economic development, and is not based on the need to resolve existing groundwater pollution problems resulting from failing sewer systems, connecting to the Hawleyville sewer extension is optional.

The Hawleyville sewer system expansion would extend sewer lines from 166 Mt Pleasant Road eastward along Mt Pleasant Road to its intersection with Hawleyville Road. The sewer mains also would extend northward along sections of Hawleyville Road and Covered Bridge Road. Some cross-country sewers may be installed.

The Hawleyville sewer system started operation in 2001. It currently serves several high-density residential complexes.