NEWPORT, Maine — The Newport Sanitary District, which was founded in 1971, has obtained a $1.75 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Superintendent Dan Stevens said Monday that the funds will be used to replace two miles of antiquated clay pipe.
“We have 14 miles of sewer pipe,” Stevens said. Over the past decades, 12 miles of pipe have been replaced. “We have two miles left,” he said. “That will bring the entire system up to date.”
Stevens said the Sanitary District’s board of trustees has not yet voted on the grant, but he expected it to be accepted. Until then, however, the list of roads where replacements will be done is tentative. “After the June 1 meeting [of the trustees] we’ll know exactly which streets we will plan to replace,” he said. “After that, it will depend on how the project bids come in whether we can do them all.”
He also said there could be enough funds for some plant upgrades but that the project will “focus first on the streets.”
The district was created in 1971 and has four employees. It has an annual budget of $200,000.
The district was originally built to deal with a pollution problem created by a now-defunct cottage cheese factory.
Before construction of the new secondary treatment facilities, the East Branch of the Sebasticook River was being contaminated by untreated wastewater discharges from about half of Newport’s 3,000 residents as well as from the H.P. Hood cottage cheese plant, according to an overview on the Maine Department of Environ-mental Protection’s Web site.
At the time, the DEP determined the river was not suitable for fishing, swimming and other recreational uses.
In 1980, the $4.7 million wastewater treatment facility was built on Martin Stream Road, close to the Plymouth town line. State and federal grants paid for almost 88 percent of the cost, while the district paid 8 percent and H.P. Hood paid 4.1 percent of the cost. The facility was constructed in five phases: 14,000 feet of new sanitary sewers; 2,100 feet of new storm drains; a cast-in-place pump station; 8,000 feet of force main; a 29 million-gallon, three-lagoon treatment system; and an operations building.