Grant Would Help Fund Sewer Line For Mobile Home Park

By Andrew Gorosko

The town plans to seek a $500,000 federal grant to cover the cost of extending a municipal sanitary sewer line to a local trailer park to correct serious waste disposal problems posed by failing septic systems.

Town officials and representatives of the state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) Tuesday morning toured the Meadowbrook Terrace Mobile Home Park at 55 Sugar Street, where septic waste hauling trucks must regularly pump out the septic systems to prevent public health hazards.

“I’m encouraged” by the state’s inspection of conditions at the 12-acre trailer park, said Elizabeth Stocker, the town’s community development director.

“It’s always a positive sign when we get a site visit,” the development director said of the prospects of the town obtaining a grant for the sewer extension project.

“I think that this [grant application] has a very good chance of being funded. It’s to maintain affordable housing,” Ms Stocker said.

Attorney Robert Hall, who represents the trailer park’s owners, told DECD officials the town’s health department would shut down the trailer park unless it is regularly pumped out by septic trucks to prevent public health hazards. Three large septic fields are used for waste disposal at the site.

Delores Capers, a DECD grant administrator, and Dennis Magee, a DECD construction specialist, toured the Sugar Street property as septic haulers demonstrated the steps they regularly take to keep the septic systems at the trailer park functioning.

Ms Stocker said the town will hold a public hearing sometime in June to air residents’ views about the town seeking the $500,000 grant.

Preliminary engineering for a sewer line extension has been completed, she said. The cost of preparing final engineering plans for a sewer extension would be included in the grant application, she said.

Earlier this year, town officials were planning to seek a $315,000 grant for the project.

But on the advice of Larry Wagner, a town grant consultant, the town would now seek up to $500,000 to cover project costs, Ms Stocker said. Having the authority to spend up to $500,000 would prevent the need for the town to return to DECD to seek added funds to cover project costs, she said.

Last February, a survey of households at the trailer park indicated that a clear majority of households there meet low- and moderate-income requirements, enabling the town to seek the federal grant.

Thirty-eight households, of the 51 households that responded to a survey, meet the low- and moderate-income requirements. There are 61 lots at the trailer park, five of which are vacant. Surveys were sent to the 56 occupied lots.

The town poll which had been submitted to Meadowbrook households asked householders how many people live in their mobile home, including family members and unrelated individuals. Also, it asked for general information concerning annual household income. In Newtown, the low and moderate annual income limit for a “family of one” is $35,150, ranging in increments up to $66,250 for a “family of eight.”

More than 100 people live in Meadowbrook. Many units have single occupants. One unit has five residents.

In the spring of 2000, the town had applied to the DECD for a $317,020 federal grant to cover costs to extend public sanitary sewers to the trailer park. But the state refused to accept that grant application due to the low response rate to an initial income poll of trailer park residents. Only 33 households had responded to the first poll.

Although Meadowbrook may not meet the state’s technical definition of “affordable housing,” the complex, in practical terms, provides affordable housing for local residents, Ms Stocker has said.

In 1999, the trailer park’s owners hired Fuss and O’Neill, Inc., the town’s consulting engineer, to design a sewer line to connect the trailer park to the sewer system. The trailer park is roughly 2,000 feet west of the nearest point of the municipal sewer system. A low-pressure sewer would be extended from the municipal sewer system at the intersection of Sugar Street and West Street to the trailer park. Grinder pumps would power the sewer line. Properties lying alongside that sewer line between the trailer park and the existing sewer system would not be allowed to connect to the sewer system.

The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has been working with the town in seeking to solve the trailer park’s sewage disposal problems. The DEP has maintained that the long-term solution for Meadowbrook’s septic system woes is connecting its trailers to the municipal sewer system.

According to DEP documents, the septic failure problems at Meadowbrook date back to at least 1984. DEP issued orders to Meadowbrook in 1984 and in 1990 to correct pollution problems. But despite steps which were taken to solve the problems, more septic failures continued to occur.