Water & Sewer Authority (WSA) members have unanimously approved having their consulting engineering firm start final design work on the Hawleyville sanitary sewer system extension, a municipal project intended to stimulate economic development.

At a February 5 meeting, WSA member Richard Zang made a motion to have Fuss & O’Neill, Inc, start the final design project, with successive stages of that design to be sequentially approved by the WSA as the project progresses.

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

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 February 2014 town meeting, voters by an 81-to-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.

At the February 5 session, WSA members learned that a state engineer who is overseeing the grant’s implementation is researching how the funds would be used for the sewer extension project.

Fuss & O’Neill, Inc is expected to complete the sewer design work by late spring. Sewer system construction would start later this year.

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

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.

Before sewer system construction starts, planned 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.

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.