Board of Health - Regular Meeting

good afternoon everyone I'm calling the Southboro Board of Health meeting to order on Wednesday January 22nd 2025 at 12:04 p.m um myself and Saar Medina are present um and we have one agenda item um to discuss this is a special meeting um and Al Hamilton and Sam Styers have joined us from the select board to talk about the possibility of Route n Waste Water Treatment Plant and we also have our health agents on Chris Craig and Dennis costell so welcome gentlemen thank you for coming thank you um I'm GNA Jump Right In um this is really hopefully the presentation is somewhat self-explanatory but a small group have been working on this matter so Chelsea if you can share the screen there we go um so we're going to be talking today about uh the potential for building a wastewater treatment system primarily uh serving uh the rout n commercial and Industrial properties if you can go to the next slide there's one principal motivation for this examination at this time um over the last few years what we have seen is our the ratio of values of residential to Commercial and Retail and Industrial uh properties has been shifting from its traditional 8020 mix uh it's currently now at 83.7 um this has been driven partially by the increase in residential values and the lack of increase in commercial properties due to um vacancy rates uh what this has meant is is that we're Shifting the tax burden onto the residents um it's no secret that our commercial and Industrial uh taxpayers uh pay a lot more in taxes than they consume in Services which is exactly the opposite of residences it is likely that

this ratio will get worse before it gets better and and um that means that additional an additional portion of the tax burden will be shifted onto residents if we wanted to get back to that 8020 ratio we would need about $150 Million worth of uh CIP development uh just to get back to the 8020 ratio the route 9 quor is the only area in town that could accommodate this type of gain and value next slide please so you know we looked at we're looking at at what are the barriers to growth of the CIP portion of our tax base zoning is certainly an issue the town's reputation uh as being not busy business friendly is is an issue and a big one is the lack of wastewater treatment for properties along Route nine we have properties along r n and I'm telling you guys things you already know that don't perk or don't perk well our perk limited we have Acres of asphalt that cover uh the mini plants for commercial buildings and other buildings um and I I did a little research and if you travel from Boston and head West on route nine the first community that you run into without Wastewater Services is the town of Southboro if you keep traveling west you have to get to Goan which is if you note the Little Star there population 92 six before you run into another Community without Wastewater services and so it kind of uh paints us as as kind of behind the power curve um it's important to remember that that some commercial and Industrial businesses just don't work well with septic systems restaurants

grocery stores biotech and some manufacturing really would benefit from having Wastewater Services the next page um so if we built a Wastewater system it would make the town more attractive to a variety of businesses and the best example I can give you is restaurants we are we have relatively few restaurants in town a restaurant generates about eight times as much Wastewater per square foot as a commercial building so you can see that they are definitely Wastewater intensive um it would potentially make some undevelopable partials more developable or more developable at higher densities which increases uh tax revenues um it would also have the opport we'd have an opportunity to reduce the number of impermeable surfaces which would help us with our storm Water Management Systems um Wastewater systems um increase property values regardless of whether the property is connected or not and I'm actually working with the assessor now to see if we can't quantify that uh and get some better data um it's also an opportunity to use treated Wastewater in the place where we're currently using drink water drinking water um these gray water could be can be used for irrigation and um using that as a Green Solution so it's an example you know currently we're spending a lot of money on an irrigation system for the golf course and it might be that uh gray water would be a better solution for that um and it provides us with the opportunity to better monitoring and controlling of what goes into the environment the uh treated water that comes out of a Wastewater system is considerably cleaner than the treated water that goes into a leech field in a septic system again I'm telling you guys stuff you already know uh next

Slide by the way if I ever get anything wrong please chime in because we're in we're in the learning mode uh there have been three uh Wastewater studies that have been done in about the last year and a have they've identified some design opportunities uh they've identified some short and medium-term volumes that are going to be on the order of again primarily focusing on Route n of half a million to a million gallons a day and they've identified some possible disposal sites and methods over the last three months uh I've taken the lead to um work with a small group to begin investigating what's required to take the next step and I've reached out to a number of others to gather information next slide so uh this is what we've been doing uh we met with the Framingham DPW to see if we could connect to the Framingham system Framingham was more than willing to talk to us about that and there were some opportunities for Mutual benefit um to connect through to the MW system uh we spoke with the MW and they are not very excited about connect having us connect is not for lack of capacity at the Deer Island plant in general but what they're dealing with is a combined sewer storm water system and so what they end up with is Peak uh loading uh problems when we have big storms and so they're not looking to take on um additional uh communities at this time and probably for the foreseeable future uh we spoke with a member of the Westborough select board to about the possibility of connecting into the Westboro shwb B Hopton Wastewater system which is located in West in expansion uh they however that

system is a a surface discharge system which means you know the treated e is flowing into a stream in this case it's the aset river and uh the federal government uh through the Clean Water Act is very parsimonious with increased capacity for those types of systems and so I think they're going to have a challenge getting additional capacity that's discharged into the aset and so there is an interesting opportunity for regional cooperation uh where we could add Wastewater processing capability which would then be essentially a combined system and there are some economic reasons why we might want to do that uh next slide we've had a discussion with Weston and Samson who was one of the authors of the recent studies they confirmed that surface discharges it's going to be ground discharge similar to Le field um and is the most practical option uh soil C characteristics are going to um determine the best location um I've already had a a a good conversation with Dennis and Chris and I think they can at least help us where we shouldn't look at at at at first blush um the Wastewater uh systems do have substantial economies of scale so a bigger system which leads us back to the the possibility of a regional solution um offer um more appealing cost uh profiles um Wastewater systems can be designed to to um expand incrementally so you don't have to build the entire full million gallon g a day or however many gallons a day at the beginning you can build them if you plan it properly you can build it so that it can be expanded uh we've had a discussion with the D they've confirmed

again that ground discharge is the most practical disposal method they're very they've been very responsive and willing to help um and they've sort of identified the next Milestone which is development of what would be called the comprehensive plan the three studies that have been done um sort of found form the foundation of that plan but the comprehensive plan begins to look in more detail at what you're going to build at where you're going to build and who you're going to serve and it's uh somewhat analogous to the uh work that we're currently doing on the nearer school where you know we we haven't actually designed a building yet but we figuring out what the building has to do and you know we have rough ideas that's really the next step uh next slide please uh we met with a company called violia violia is the company that manages the westw westbo Wastewater Plant uh they're a national company that manages Water and Wastewater plants um a lot of communities hire these specialist companies to actually operate their Wastewater systems they require licensed operations it's a very specialized business one that you know it makes a lot of sense to hire somebody who really knows what they're doing because you you're you're dealing with sensitive environmental issues um violia interestingly enough has a regulated utility division that owns and operates Water and Wastewater systems on a private basis uh so this is common in the Mid-Atlantic States they would essentially operate uh similar to a regulated utility similar to NSTAR or eversource or National Grid where you know they're providing a utility service um it's not common in fact they couldn't point to an example of where it was actually being done in New England as

you know we're setting our ways sometimes you know if you look at how long it took us to join a regional dispatch system um it's slow goinging sometime but this could be an attractive option from the town finance perspective if we build our own or we build it in conjunction with a neighbor the funding is going to be substantial man um it will ultimately be paid for by the users but it's going to require you know a major bonding effort to get this off the ground uh next slide please we've begun to talk to Route n stakeholders because they're obviously the folks that are going to have to pay for it uh we've had one meeting so far with they very supportive they um we met and they they believe that this is the key to unlocking a lot of value along Route 9 value along Route 9 is tax revenue for the town um and we are now briefing you guys which was our our next step um next slide please so what are the big issues um where to locate the Wastewater Plant is a big issue um we need about four or five acres of land where to operate the disposal site or sites we'd need 5 to 10 acres of land um actually uh went on to the USDA uh soils maps and um I'm gonna want need to Dennis and Chris's advice because I can manipulate it but I don't know what it means and so um but we have a couple of potential places we're at least interested in uh we need to settle on what a business model is uh Public public private or private um and whether it's a town or Regional if we go with the regional approach it would probably

be less expensive but it does uh up the regulatory burdens the MW wants the water that comes into a community in its in in in a perfect world to be disposed of in that community and so if you're doing something on a regional basis you get additional scrutiny um we need to settle on uh are we only going to serve route n or are we going to serve other areas as well and in particular uh the schools um schools have a uh a septic profile that's not optimal for septic systems you know septic system is a big biological system and you have intermittent yeah I'm telling you stuff you guys know have intermittent flows and so you know um they might be better served by a Wastewater system they also have large areas that might need irrigation and as a and using uh gray water for irrigation is I think a a nice green option that might make a lot of sense uh there's questions about whether we should serve the downtown area which I think you guys all know has significant uh septic limitations and perhaps other areas of town that have poor septic capacity of course the big issue is how we going to pay for it how we going to pay for the the inter the comprehensive plan and then uh ultimately how we would build an operate pay for building and operating a system uh next slide so the next steps that we're going to do is to brief you guys uh the planning board and the EDC we're continuing Outreach to the shareholders stakeholders excuse me not shareholders um discuss it with the schools and then understand sort of what we have to do to put together a

comprehensive plan and look for funding sources for that plan uh and have additional conversations with W particularly Westboro and marbor we understand are also in you know sitting in the same boat one of the things that I I've learned from being on the septic on the select board is the problems we have are the same problems everybody has so that's um the dog oh I'm sorry there was one more yeah so our near-term goals you know ideally we'd like to be in a position in the summer of 25 to decide whether we want to proceed with a comprehensive plan it is likely to be a six-figure thing um in the fall fund that plan and then begin it in 25 it's an ambitious goal but you might as well set an ambitious goal if you ever want to achieve anything so that's that's what we've been up to and I uh I want to say Dennis and Chris uh gave me a brief tutorial and I think we're going to be uh with the board's uh blessing uh availing ourselves of their wisdom um in short order any questions Den Chris do you have anything to add I know you guys had a conversation prior to the meeting but no I think he lays that out pretty well as far as what has to be done and I think we've talked to enough to figure out where we need to look just figure out where we need not to look is a very good way to approach that um so yeah no we're more than willing to do anything we can to help everybody Chelsea i' I'd ask one question of Dennis and Chris also that uh if we're thinking about putting the a system running up and down route nine are there other areas of town that are at least close enough to route nine that are notoriously difficult from a septic standpoint that we might as well try to connect uh selected pieces we certainly

don't want to make create a massive system here but for example faville I have no idea what's going on in faville but if that area was difficult and we thought we were going to be under pressure for Wastewater capacity private or otherwise in the faille area um it would be worth thinking about running a Spur down Central Street a little bit there while we're doing all this stuff but I don't know I can't think of other areas that anecdotally I've heard there are major problems with that we might want to consider but those are the kind of things that we would look to you folks to give us some input on to say you might as well think about X Y or Z here when you're doing that make sure we don't miss any opportunities 10 years later say why didn't we think of that kind of thing so all right yeah no you're right about faille there's no there's a very limited soil uh any good soils in favil but yeah no I think you're right I think we need to look at the whole town stop from the beginning yeah and we it seems to me it's a real stretch for us to try to get downtown connected to this just just logistically and you know collection system is expensive to build certainly after the fact here and so if there are any relatively easier connections to make that that would be a good thing and I I don't think it's worth thinking about anything with the uh New England Center for Children there they've got their connection to the Framingham system into the MW um I don't know if they got recent approval to add capacity that one I think didn't they get an additional yeah couple thousand gallons a day or something so not a lot yeah so again it it might be worth talking to them to see if they they've got big plans to do something else there somehow that uh would make a difference but um uh again I can't think of other you know fairly obvious places where wow we might as well connect here or there or whatever so any thoughts there would be

helpful yeah if we were to connect to the schools for example then getting to downtown might become more feasible so you know it's we we are still very early in this process as you probably have figured out dapar do you have any questions we can't hear you would that possibly connect to it because I know there's a lot of like little little businesses there that do a lot of that may generate a lot of waste we couldn't hear you Saar where is that what area still can't hear you what's wrong with my mic here all right let me type it into the chat real that's that's okay we can hear you now we can hear you now hear me now okay it's not being changed okay now I was going to say there's a lot of like like different office type things on Route n as you head towards westbr especially like a that big building with the dental practice and a few other places that may generate different kinds of waste um and things like that so would they be part of this as well like are we looking at a big like everybody all inclusive even that part of it say we do another the plant on another part I just want to make sure I understand that yeah yeah all the all the businesses along there would be candidates certainly and and that opens us up Westborough has has apparently had some interest from Developers for Life Sciences complex on Route 9 near the southb toown line and what I understand is they've delayed that because they just don't have the Wastewater capacity there and so you know if they're attracting those kind of businesses and we had Wastewater capacity some of that might spill over into Southborough as well potentially and that would be great so again anything along there is a is a candidate in terms of where this would be located in the acreage that you're looking for does it actually have to be

on Route n or could you look at other areas NOP not not necessarily I mean you've got to pipe a collection system you've got to pipe the input around which is costly electricity to pipe to pump stuff and then waste the affluent going out some systems as I understand it pump that output from a system some distance for irrigation and other kind of purposes so basically pumping water is cost money but not a huge amount um one interesting thing that's come up again be eager for any feedback from Dennis and Chris about it is that if you go West on Route 9 toward Westborough uh just as you cross under 495 there uh on the right there is a a a gate and a fence and a road going up between the Lanes on 495 Northbound and southbound lanes and if you look at the map uh 495 actually splits right there uh for a substantial distance up toward the Samano drive and there are about 30 or 40 acres of median in there that massot owns or controls that technically if one could get access to that that one could think about putting a plant and um uh discharge ground discharge charge area in there and dealing with Mast dot for anything is is extraordinarily difficult but but uh but we've got some contacts into to Mass DOT and if if we for example knew something about the soils in there which again you guys might be able to help us with the soil maps to say is that someplace that you could put a ground discharge facility um and particularly if we had a regional proposal uh that's the kind of thing that the state government is often behind as far as uh the regional deals so that is is a real far-fetched concept but it's interesting that that could be something that U opens the door to a

location that nobody's going to object to basically because it's tucked away over there and um so any reason that uh Dennis or Chris you think that that might be problematic to do a technical standpoint we'd have to look at that I mean and as far as the soils go um the soil's maps um are good uh but they're not the end all um so you definitely still have to go and do on-site sure so yeah so I would kind of defer wait to say oh geez this is really good then you get there and it's not really what's on the map y or may on a Ledge or something up there that you can't do much with yeah I mean like I say you're you're talking maybe a day or two to go out and you know do some soil testing just to give you an idea of what we're talking about today yeah however I wouldn't go out and jump and say yes that's a great area for that um without being specific and before we do any of that we've got to get Mass do at least to say they will entertain the idea which is I think so in terms of the finances for this um what are the advantages and disadvantages to going regional versus versus keeping it Town only do you get more State support meaning grant funding to do Regional or is it really in terms of capacity you get so much efficiency by having a larger capacity that you save in that regard um again this is very preliminary but certainly that's what Wesson and Samson told us is there are big economies of scale in terms of the construction of of the the plant and the disposal area so there so um and and that makes sense um because it's it's a

big construction process um so I think there are substantial economies there there are probably also some substantial operating economies you have to have you know licensed um technicians on site I believe it's 247 and um so you know whether they're they're whether they're monitoring half a million gallons a day or five million gallons a day so I I I think if a regional approach um if it is not overly uh regulatory comple regulatorily complex would probably make sense now you know there's many a slip Twix the cup on the lip here and we've also had input uh previously for Grant activities project groups like Mass works for example seem to really like Regional kinds of things but there's no magic formula on that but that those seem to be very relatively more successful for Grant support but again very speculative but um interesting so and then you'd have to bond it so let's say let's say it was just self bro only for just Simplicity the town would have to bond it but then you would have the users pay towards the bond the users um yeah effectively the town would ultimately be on the hook for the bond right the um the rates would be figured in such a way that the users would certainly uh be paying would ultimately be paying off the bond it's it's a little tricky because you know you don't you can do things like betterments um uh you know you're going to see that the values of those properties that have access where whether they connect or not would increase which would then increase our tax revenues so this is uh this is a piece we need to

dig into a little bit more because how you pay for something that is kind of important right that the town sheep skate given the other capital projects lurking out there um very challenging yeah I mean do you have do you have any idea like ballpark what this would cost or is it to Weston and Sam yeah Weston and Samson gave us a ballpark and you that and uh $3 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks okay um it was I think their number was on the order of $30 million okay it's going to be measured in tens of millions yeah I don't think it's gonna be measured in hundreds but yeah that's maybe 10 mil for a collection system and then 20 30 40 for the processing piece kind of thing so so and you probably you probably have thought about this um but maybe haven't done it yet on what the upswing would be on the other side right so assuming that you install Better bent fees and have them be able to offset the bond what's the revenue increase that you that we would see in perpetuity right for the town like I think that's important um if we can calculate that um so the one thing I've asked Paul sabell to do is to you know if if you if we ran if a sewer magically appeared on route nine how would the uh values change so and he's he's out reaching out to his Network to see if he can get a Paul Park on that but it's also really about attracting new business to town yeah and you know that's yeah my crystal ball unfortunately is as good as yours you know we have this very large Industrial Park you know right along 495 on Route 9

the klin drive and it's been largely empty for decades and so um you know here we have this big Industrial Park it's you know within a ston throw of the Mass Pike in 495 has good access to highways and we're not getting businesses locating there so we've got to do something to make that more attractive and then beyond that we would probably see particularly along the rest of Route n um a lot more restaurants for example um you know it's you know if you talk to um you know moros for example you guys know this better than anybody you know that you know they are their business is limited by their their septic issues and um you know I bet they'd love to served dinner there as well and Chelsea your question I think leads to an interesting timing issue there because if if we for example invest in a system and build it the payback comes over a longer period of time certainly because you got to have time for people to be attracted to build there and create new businesses etc etc and so you've got a real Gap I would think in terms of when the revenue is likely to flow to pay this thing off so that's to me a real challenge that continues to make it look like if there are private options if the violia folks or others might be induced to come in and actually build and operate the system that would be pretty interesting option the challenge there is that you don't want to be held hostage by somebody who owns the the prop the plant and triples the price every year kind of thing right that's that's why they structure this as a public utility often and it's somewhat regulated at least so a lot of moving Parts there that could get us to the Finish Line more quickly certainly if we

did that so okay great what do you need from us then um I think what we probably need in the near term is uh Chris and Dennis's expertise terms of sort of just uh understanding in the short run where we shouldn't look and you know maybe taking a look you know sit down with us with the soils map and you know look at at at that spot in between 4 95 I I went on to the USDA soils map and looked at it but those words meant nothing to me um you know uh beyond that you know uh you are the Board of Health you know this is so we want to make sure that you guys know what we're doing and um if there are thing if we if there are other resources that we think you could help us with don't worry we're not shy I know well and going forward periodically additional help from Dennis and Chris if we've got questions or issues that come up from a technical standpoint that we don't have the capacity for we've actually as as U Al mentioned Brian Shay has agreed to help a little bit on the process which is great because Brian has been last 40 years doing Wastewater for stanch and so has great technical expertise but he's a limited Resource as well so again uh we just don't have the technical expertise that you guys have and would be great to get help occasionally on that side of it certainly sure I would I would say just um reach out to Chris and Dennis when you want to schedule time with them um if you can just copy me on it that'd be great um but they're generally in Southboro Wednesday Thursday Friday morning okay great and obviously they're in the field so yeah um you know working around when they're in the office right Dennis

right I bet you don't want to be in the field today right no not today um we do have a hand raised um in the audience so I'm going to um bring them over if you can please um state your name and your address for the record please my name is Paul Carter I'm at six Hillside Avenue and uh I've been a engineer for 40 years as well not concentrating in the Wastewater but in the Civil transportation done development Works work as well um and I'm familiar with the different parts of this um it sounds like the group is doing a great job and uh digging into all the important things um uh my question I just didn't know what you guys were doing and uh I did go through the Weston and Samson report uh I used to work for Weston and Samson I think that's a good foundation for what you guys are doing going forward and it sounds like you've had some other studies done but the comprehens of study sounds like that's the big thing and the other thing I was thinking about is maybe you need to do a planning study of what the buildout would be what you're hoping for um that would give you a number um the other thing I'd say about the groundwater discharge permit is uh that's a big number and looking at the soils I would say you should really limit it to the a soils if you can because a soils are sand and you're basically going to be doing um a heavy dischar charge to groundwater the other thing about the a soils is just as important is the depth of groundwater because if you don't have adequate depth of groundwater you can't put a system in there for instance at 120 you're right next to the reservoir groundwater is pretty close to the level of the the reservoir so do you have enough distance to groundw enough

thickness in order to uh put a system in there I also work for CDM Smith CDM Smith does the same thing uh CDM Smith designs and builds and operates wastewater treatment plants for various municipalities in Massachusetts so you might talk to uh CDM Smith as well those are those my main comments my other comment relates to the 40b and I uh they're going forward with that at 120 Turnpike and they're showing a large septic system which involves clearing a big part of the side of the hill and so I ask you know has the Board of Health reviewed and proved that did you guys approve it yet because they're going forward with Conservation Commission so Paul I'm GNA I'm going to stop you there because that's not on our agenda for this morning and I'm actually gonna lose my Quorum so um thank you for your comments and M Mr scarter uh would you send me an email because I think we would very much uh like to get in touch with you about helping us uh we're looking for people with substantial technical expertise in this area and when somebody shows up and demonstrate some expertise we like to we like to um get the benefit of their wisdom so if if you would my email address is on the website it's uh a. Hamilton south.com and if we would definitely we would we would love to involve someone like you in in this effort I all right great all right well thank you um Al and Sam for presenting and uh Dennis and Chris for your expertise um and I'm sorry we have to jump because we're on to our next call but um I moved to a jo ajour at 12:41 a second all right and Melos I have a

great day everyone thank you so much thanks all thank you have a good day