EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine — Town officials celebrated Earth Day by announcing that they will receive $7.1 million in federal funding to build a new wastewater treatment plant and find new uses for buildings at the adjoining former Great Northern Paper Co. mill.
Scheduled to go fully online by early 2020, the new $10 million facility on Main Street will help preserve the quality of the the Penobscot River watershed and be a potent economic development tool that could draw manufacturing and commercial businesses to the mill site and other parts of East Millinocket and Medway, Virginia Manuel, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s state rural development director, said Friday.
Manuel said that several businesses have expressed interest in moving into the mill site, which adjoins the Penobscot. Access to the state-of-the-art plant will make the mill site more developable, she said during a news conference at the town office. Medway officials hope to run water service from the plant through their town along Route 11 to Interstate 95, thereby making Medway and some of the state’s largest undeveloped tracts along the highway much more business-friendly.
“There’s the preservation and conservation of the Penobscot and that goes to recreational development in our view,” Manuel said. “This is a magnificent area of the state that I think has so many assets. I can imagine more recreational opportunities, more small business opportunities, coming about because this is here.”
“It just makes the territory, the area here, that much more viable and attractive to know that we have a new and efficient wastewater facility that will be less costly than the one we have here right now,” said Mark Scally, chairman of the Board of Selectmen.
The USDA hopes that this grant will be the start of extensive efforts to help the Katahdin region recover from the losses of its two paper mills, Manuel said.
The former Great Northern Paper Co. LLC mill closed in 2014, resulting in the eventual loss of more than 250 jobs and devastating the Katahdin region economy. The mill made newsprint and telephone directory-grade paper. Its closure ended more than 100 years of international papermaking success in the Katahdin region. The Millinocket mill closed in 2008.
East Millinocket bought the treatment plant for $1 in June 2015. Since then, town officials have been working to replace the facility with something more modern. The original estimated cost, $11.4 million, was pared back when town officials modified their specifications, town Administrative Assistant Angela Cote said.
Of the $7.1 million, $3.6 million will be a direct loan that the town will pay back and $3.5 million will be a grant. Besides the loan, the town will have to pay another $3 million to complete the facility, but town officials are working to get more funding that will cut into that figure, Scally said.
With the federal money awarded, architects will begin designing the new facility, which will replace the secondary wastewater treatment plant that GNP had used for about 40 years. The design and permit approval phases should take about nine months, leaving construction likely to start in April 2017.
Three towns in addition to East Millinocket will also receive federal funds for water treatment projects, USDA Rural Development announced.
— The Freeport Sewer District will receive a loan of $2.1 million and a $1.1million grant. Funds will be used to rehabilitate 11,000 linear feet of sewer lines, replacing key components of the Mast Landing and Porter Landing Pump Stations, and the construction of a new pump station.
— The Lincolnville Sewer District has been selected to receive a loan of $1.6 million and a $1 million grant. Funds will be used to construct a new wastewater collection system and a new wastewater treatment facility in the Beach Area of Lincolnville.
— The city of Old Town has been selected to receive a $1.65 million loan and a grant of $550,000. Funds will be used to replace three of the city’s aged wastewater pump stations. The city’s wastewater system plays an important role in preserving the Penobscot River.