THOMASTON, Maine — The town is on the verge of joining a select group of Maine municipalities thanks to a major funding award announced Saturday.
By the time almost $1.9 million from the USDA’s Rural Development is spent, some 97 percent of the town’s wastewater collection and treatment system will have been upgraded to current standards. In a state where municipal water and sewer maintenance backlogs likely stand in the billions of dollars, that’s a big deal, according to town officials.
Many of the speakers at an event Saturday in downtown Thomaston agreed that sewer pipes aren’t glamorous, but the rationale behind the project — protecting the shores of the Georges and Mill rivers — is vital to the town’s future. According to Neil Pollis, a municipal shellfish warden who patrols Thomaston and five nearby towns, the mud flats along the river support 128 shellfish harvesters.
“We produce a lot of the state’s clams and these are some of the best-tasting clams you can get in Maine,” he said.
To underscore that point, Pollis steamed several pounds of soft-shell clams, which attendees at Saturday’s event enjoyed when the speeches were over.
Sewage is one of the top causes of shellfishing closures. Upgrading the system and keeping the effluent away from the river has opened vast mud flats in the past 20 years that previously were off-limits.
USDA-Rural Development State Director Virginia Manuel said Thomaston won a competitive bidding process for the money, which includes a loan of $1,099,000 and $788,000 in grant funding. The town will chip in another $113,000. In all, the USDA has invested $7.2 million in loans and $3.5 million in grants in Thomaston to upgrade almost all underground sewer lines and rebuild the town’s wastewater treatment plant in a location farther away from the rivers than it once was.
“Some of the waste infrastructure here, as in many Maine communities, is more than 100 years old,” said Manuel.
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, said many of the sewer lines were installed in the early days of radio and the Model A Ford.
“We hear from shellfish harvesters all the time about keeping the flats open,” said Pingree. “This is just one of those investments that has to continue to be made.”
The money for this project and others was freed up earlier this month when Congress passed a budget bill that had been debated for months, said Pingree. Sewer infrastructure usually sees healthy funding from the federal government, she said.
“This is one of those issues that every senator and congressman has a need for in their district,” she said. “If we cut this funding, the expense will be put on the backs of the property taxpayers. It’s a priority issue for most of us.”
Thomaston Town Manager Valmore Blastow Jr. said the money will pay for sewer line replacement on Wadsworth Street, Brooklyn Heights Road, Sunrise Terrace and Sunset Terrace. Approximately eight homes along the rivers also will be hooked into the town system.
Jon Eaton, a Thomaston selectman and member of the Georges River Tidewater Association, hailed the federal funding and said it wasn’t too long ago — 1993 — when virtually all of the clam flats in the area were closed because of pollution.
“The total economic benefits of these projects have far outweighed the costs,” he said. “No one can tell me that environmental protection and economic development are incompatible goals. There are lots of impediments to development in a small town, but none of them in Thomaston will be the sewer system.”
Blastow said the work on the sewer lines will occur over the next couple of years.
