Planning and Zoning Commission - Special Meeting

I'd like to call the special town meeting for Tuesday, August 11, 2026 to order. It's 5.30 p.m. Captain Bishop. Todd Archulofsky.

Lauren Dombrowski.

William Hester.

Public Works director Rollins will be giving a presentation shortly item to reading of the warning notice of the town meeting Yes Warning to all persons entitled to vote in town meetings of the town of Winchester County of which field and state of Connecticut you are hereby notified and warned of a special town meeting of said town to be held on Tuesday, August 11th, 2026 at 5.30 p.m. and referendum to be held on Tuesday, August 18th, 2026, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at 338 Main Street, Winstead, Connecticut, Town of Winchester, Town Hall. I don't know that it's gonna be that. Okay, yeah, it's just in Town Hall.

All right, item three, new business discussion and information on lead service line referendum for phase two. Director Rollins. You're on the mic.

For the record, oh, are we on? Okay. For the record, Jim Rollins, Director of Public Works. Tonight we're here to give you a little bit of an update and an information overload on the proposed referendum or the scheduled referendum for the lead service line inventory for phase two of the lead service line inventory for the Winstead Water Works. So we are presenting tonight because in the past we did phase one of the lead service line inventory, which is required by Environmental Protection Agency administered through the Department of Public Health. That was a $450,000 project where we used the state revolving fund, which forgave 75% of that loan, leaving us with just a loan of 25%. So a very cost-effective way of doing work. So phase one is complete. Now it's time to go on to phase two. So we'll go on to just a little summary, some basics about the service line, how the financing is done for the project, and lastly, there's a bunch of FAQs, which we won't go over tonight, but this is going to be on the website, so anybody can click and go on. We checked the link today. It does work, so it should be a nice, easy transition for those that are watching from home. Okay, so Todd, this is where you just make a motion to waive reading the whole entire...

I move that the reading of the resolution to be presented to this special town meeting under item one of the notice be waived and that the full text of the resolution be incorporated into the minutes of this meeting. Second the motion. per bond council, full resolution authorizing the appropriation. The insurance of the bonds and the notes, et cetera, is read or for full resolution. That text is made available to attendees. Reading may be waived. I'll second the motion. All in favor?

Do you guys want to vote? It's now a meeting. You guys can vote. And there are printed copies floating around if anybody wants one. Thank you. So back to, you know, this is kind of a replay of the PowerPoint that we did two years ago when we did phase one. We just changed some of the numbers and just kind of cleaned up the slides to make them easier to follow. Basically, the lead service line inventory is required by EPA, and that was established years and years ago, I think in the 90s is when it first started working on this. And this phase, the service line inventory, had to be prepared by October of 2024. So we all pushed, pushed, pushed, and got through that. That initial service line inventory leads to the full service line inventory, which is our phase two. In phase one, we We looked at 142 service lines, dug them up right at the curb stops, checked two points, the line coming from the street to the house, and then from the street to the curb, and then from the curb to the house. You get that in one spot. Phase two, because we need to come up with a statistical level of confidence of 95%, the EPA's formula says that for a system our size, we need to look at 190 more services. And that, it's hard to read, but if you look under here, if you have 2,000 to 3,000 people or services, the number that you have to inspect visually for confirmation is 341. That comes from EPA. So that's what we have to go after. And that's the most cost... That's the most expensive part of the project because it's very labor intensive. So now we'll get into some of the service line basics, just so that everybody knows more or less what we're talking about. So anybody that's connected to the municipal water system is connected to a water main, which is right here in the center of the screen at the bottom. And then there's a water line, a service line, that comes off the main out to a valve right at the curb line and then from there in is privately owned to the meter and then you get the plumbing in the house so that's basically you know little differences but typically you'll have an 8 to 12 inch pipe out in the street typically about a one-inch pipe give or take a little bit from here into the house and then your meter so the service line is considered everything from the main to inside the house to the meter. And we're required to do a verification of the material that these service lines are made of in three locations. Here, between the main and the valve, between the valve and the house, and then just inside the house. So this requires us to get into some of these houses that we don't have records on and dig up some of these service lines and actually look at them if we don't have records actually even if we do have records so part of this two hundred ninety stuff that our records they are already not lead problem material we have to dig up just to verify to prove that our records are correct you know so essentially were were were confirming the statistics that we gave them Basically, what they're looking for is we have to identify what every water service is made of. You could have multiple. You could have copper in one spot, plastic at the other half. You could have galvanized. That's galvanized steel with a zinc coating. Lead is really the one they're looking for. But we have very, very few plastic lines. Almost everything was copper since then. the 80s when we started replacing lines and doing main improvements. So we were way ahead of the curve and we set a good precedent. Most of the galvanized have rusted and been changed. And lead, there's just a few stragglers out there. We expect less than a dozen in the whole system. So talking about the system, Back in the 80s is when the lead copper rule came into play, and we started changing copper pipes. And traditionally in Winstead, we started requiring copper in the 30s, well ahead, almost 50 years ahead of when it was mandated. So someone back then saved you guys a huge ton of money now because we don't have to go and replace them. so yeah i can skip that one that was we done it so there is on the on the town website you will find this um presentation and this link will bring you right to a um a website that you can look up your address and find out what we have what information we have about your service line um And Vic, can we, on that website, can we actually do an update if somebody finds something? Yeah, so you can, if you go up here and you look and we don't have anything, you know, about your service, you can actually fill it in. You can send in a picture, you can do it yourself, or you can wait for us to come around and do it for you. So we've done phase one. We've got to get on to phase two. So phase two is basically digging up all those, that extra and additional 290 service lines with an inspection at the meter as well. We've got to verify those three points just to give credibility to the data that we already submitted. Then we take all that data and we update the online website that I just showed you. We will add to the distribution mapping system a bunch of details. It'll all be GIS. And then we have to take all those results and send them to the Department of Public Health. They review it. And then if we find any lead service lines, then we have to develop a plan to replace them. I think there's a 10-year limit on that. We expect so few that we'll develop that plan right away as soon as we know what's going on, and it should be pretty quick and easy. The thing is we have to pay for all of this. So there is a funding plan for that, and we are going to utilize the same exact program that we did for phase one. through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, we will borrow the money. Now, why do we borrow the money? Well, we borrow it for two main reasons. The DWSRF will forgive 75% of the total project cost, which means the remaining 25% that we're responsible for is certainly less than paying for the whole thing on our own, obviously. On top of that, they give us a 20-year loan at 2%. which is pretty darn good financing in these days. If we chose not to go this route, we would have to pay the full project cost, or the ratepayers would have to, and probably pay market rate interest of 5% to 7%. So obviously, this is a really good value. They incentivize doing this because they're trying to clean up the water and make people healthier than they could be if they had lead. So this project is not cheap. The vast majority of the cost is actually digging in the street or on the side of the street, exposing those pipes, recording them. If I remember right, the giant spreadsheet that we have to submit, we have 2,604, I think, service lines at this moment. And each one of those service lines has 52 data points that we're supposed to be recording. So it's a very comprehensive activity. So it's very expensive. You have engineers, you have contractors, you have our staff. We've been working on this for years, and it's going to be an ongoing thing. But phase two is going to cost roughly, or phase one and two are roughly $1.8 million. which means a grant or forgiveness of $1.35 million and a loan of $452,000. So as you can see, the reason we chose this program is it's very financially advantageous for us to do so. So this cost comes from, you know, we isolated in this slide here, we've got phase one, was really just a preliminary with the initial service line inventory cost is $442,000. Phase 2 is proposed to cost $1.367 million. That $1.367 basically adding was like a 12.5% contingency on that just for cost overruns and unexpected things comes to the amount that we're asking to appropriate and go out to bond for at the referendum. So $1.565 million. So that's the plan. To comply with EPA, we have kind of two choices. We could somehow put the cost of $1.8 million onto the rate payers to pay on their own. at market rate interest, or we could take advantage and go out and borrow the money and only have to pay back 25% of it at a low interest rate. So to me, it's about the simplest decision I've had to make in my, maybe in my life, but definitely in my 11 years here at Public Works. So with that, this is where there needs to be a motion to adjourn to referendum.

Tom, do you have a motion? Can I make a motion if I'm not a resident? No, did you? Paul said you had a motion.

Okay, I'm guessing this is the one. Your conversation was before we tag-teamed this this afternoon.

Okay, gotcha. So resolved that this town meeting adjourn at the resolution presented under item one of the notice of this meeting as recommended by the Board of Selectmen. be submitted to vote at referendum to be held on Tuesday, August 18th, 2026 between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. in accordance with the notice of this meeting. The referendum will be held at the Winchester Town Hall located at 338 Main Street here in Winston. Second.

Any discussion?

Bill Hudock, 232 Granville Road. At the expense of prolonging this meeting, I think it's important that we talk about why this is important. Because otherwise, potentially, somebody may vote against this referendum thinking that they will not have to pay for it. And the reality is that they will. The question, as Jim said, is it's about financing, but it's more than that. This is a value to the town. Now I serve as one of the town's representatives of the Torrington Area Health District. I have over 40 years of experience in public health. So I understand the issue of lead intimately. If you have just one family with three children, who has lead poisoning, the special education costs for those people that are not reimbursed by the state could equal the amount that we're asking the taxpayers to pay. They all could live in one house. So, you know, as Jim said, we don't expect to find very many of these, but finding any of them is critically important from a public health standpoint and from the point of view of the town's ongoing budgetary problems. So in that regard, I urge the town to pass this referendum.

Thank you. Anyone else? Seeing no one else, all in favor?

Unanimous? Motion? So I'll add one more point to what Mr. Budak says, and it was on my list of things to mention when I came over, but I never made it into a slide. The cost of doing this is definitely less than the cost of not doing it. Not only because in the end you're going to end up doing it, It's just how much pain do you want to go through once the regulatory agencies force it down your throat and you have all the other issues associated with noncompliance. Besides, it's the right thing to do. Get the lead out of the system, and we're all good. So thank you for that reminder.

So, Jim, that information on the website, is that under the Water and Sewer Commission, or is it?

We will put it in both. It'll be on the general page, which kind of gets eaten up pretty quickly with new stuff. So we'll put it on both water and sewer where it'll be near the top.

And I know it was kind of talked about a little bit. What happens if there's lead on the other side of that valve and it goes into someone's house and there's actually lead inside the house?

You mean, so their internal plumbing is lead?

Internal plumbing is lead.

I don't know the answer to that. I'm not sure the answer has been completely decided on who's responsible. It seems ludicrous to make the water company responsible for someone's home. So I would really, really doubt that that would be the end, you know, the end decision once that's really arbitrated. But time will tell. Yeah, that just seems like an unreasonable... I think this is a pretty big ask already to do that. It should, it should fall on the landowner, but time will tell.

Just to remind everybody that's watching, this is only for the water usage. This isn't for people that are outside the system.

Yeah. Thank you, bill. That's, that is a great point. It doesn't go to the whole town. The, you know, the, the whole cost of this is by the water rate payers, not the sewer rate payers, not the taxpayers, just the water rate payers. So you dwindle that down to 2,600 addresses and you can see why it's super important to take advantage of this funding opportunity that reduces the cost because it dilutes it significantly to all of those people. And being paid over the course of 20 years just adds to the affordability of the project.

Just another quick reminder, if I can remember what it was I was going to say, oh yeah, that the whole town gets to vote on this because the water and sewer has to be backed by the town, but it's only going to be the ratepayers who pay for it. Everybody gets to vote because if water defaults, the town does have to pay.

Thank you again. These are all points I should have made. Thank you, sir.

Anybody else have anything... before it gets too out of control. Most of the wells in town are not lead, right? Correct. So the EPA won't be going after those at some point?

The key word there is at some point. I've heard that eventually they want to look at all service lines, whether they're off of wells. This is just the obvious place to start because you've got control over it. That's another one. Time will tell whether it ever gets... If it gets out that far, it'll probably be one of these things that they don't go out and... I shouldn't say... This is how I would imagine it. Don't quote me on this. I would think it would be one of these things that comes up at home inspections so that eventually everything that sells would have to get fixed before the transaction could happen. Most people would probably... There's not many out there. But I'll tell you, a lead service line lasts a long time. They don't corrode. They really are super... Just poisonous. Just poisonous, yeah.

Now, wouldn't that fall under, if it was a well and there was lead in there, wouldn't that fall under the Torrentine Area Health District? The same with a septic system. That falls under THHD. If I may...

One of the key things is that if lead is found, it goes with the land records until it is remedied. So as such, the property owner does have responsibility for it, and that's true of whether it's lead pipes or whether it is lead paint, any of those types of things.

Yeah, for the record, just in case you couldn't hear him, Mr. Hudak was stating that lead, whether it's in the water pipes or paint, goes on the land records and stays there just for future knowledge until it's abated. So that's an interesting point I didn't know. So, yeah, that aspect remains to be seen. So over time, it'll work its way through the snake. All right. It's just about 6 o'clock. Do we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second.

All in favor?

Thank you. And the referendum is Tuesday, August 18th at Town Hall from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thank you.