The project area includes communities that are principally or entirely sewered and some that are either partially sewered or have few or no public sewers. Click here for a project area map. Communities are in varying stages of preparing Comprehensive Wastewater Management Plans.  As a result, the overall understanding of community wastewater needs will differ significantly. 

The first phase of the evaluation project is a Community Needs Assessment.  The purpose of this task is to gather basic information about the existing and future wastewater needs of the individual communities, and the wastewater infrastructure assets they can bring to possible regional solutions, such as available capacity at the treatment plant for additional flows from neighboring communities.  Treatment plant size, wastewater flows, sewer needs areas, estimated future flows and potential land application sites for disposal of treated effluent will be investigated. 

With an understanding of current conditions and future plans and needs for each community, the project team will embark on the second part of the project – Alternatives Development and Evaluation. During this work, the team will identify and evaluate all feasible options for regional treatment and disposal solutions.  Disposal solutions such as outfall relocation, wetlands augmentation, treated effluent reuse and groundwater recharge will be evaluated.  The project team and the Technical Advisory Committee will work together to develop a list of criteria to evaluate alternatives, for instance, does the alternative keep water local, is it environmentally sound and are the costs reasonable compared to those of other alternatives?  Factors such as land use, habitat, wetland resources, transportation and roadways, energy, historic and archaeological resources and environmental justice will be included in the evaluation.  The list of alternatives will be evaluated, including a “no action” alternative (which means communities would continue their planning and implementation individually).

The final phase of the project is the Environmental Notification Form, which will outline a list of alternatives recommended for further study in Phase 2.  The ENF will be filed with MEPA in the fall of 2009.

For a more detailed description of the project scope, please click here to view the Project Approach pdf.