Following review, the Water & Sewer Authority (WSA) has conditionally approved providing sanitary sewer service to the Newtown Hook & Ladder Volunteer Fire Company for the firehouse that it plans to construct at 12 Church Hill Road.

The fire company plans to build an approximately 16,000-square-foot firehouse with a partial second story on the 3.16-acre site on the south side of Church Hill Road, across that street from Wendover Road.

The existing town-owned firehouse that Hook & Ladder occupies at 45 Main Street, behind Edmond Town Hall, is structurally unsound, prompting the fire company’s lengthy search for new facilities.

Newtown Hook & Ladder would own its firehouse at 12 Church Hill Road. The other four local fire companies — Dodgingtown, Hawleyville, Sandy Hook, and Botsford — own their firehouses.

Rob Manna, representing Hook & Ladder, attended the February 5 WSA session to discuss the fire company’s request for sewer service.

The fire company would discharge its wastewater into an existing lateral sewer line that extends to the site from the central municipal sewer system.

WSA members unanimously approved a sewer connection for the property, provided that the fire company provides certain technical details to the town on the sewer connection.

The sewer service line linking the firehouse to the sewer system would be lengthy, when considering that the firehouse would be situated well back from Church Hill Road on the southern end of the fire company’s property.

The fire company has gained multiple approvals for the project from local regulatory agencies.

The Police Commission, in its role as the traffic authority, however, has withheld action on the traffic aspects of the project, with commission members stating that without a formal traffic report having been done for the project, they would not act.

Local officials had told the fire company that a traffic report was not required for the project, so no traffic report was performed.