WESTBOROUGH – A study commissioned by the town’s Department of Public Works has confirmed that over the years the town over allocated when issuing permits for sewer flow.
The Westborough Wastewater Treatment plant is used by Westborough, Shrewsbury and Hopkinton. A summary of the report was presented to the Select Board on July 23.
The report summary shows that the town has permitted a total of 4.62 million gallons per day (mgd), including current (4.27 mgd) and projected (0.35 mgd) that “the town is committed to some entity,” such as single-family homes and commercial properties, said DPW Director Chris Payant.
According to Payant, the information compiled for the study “goes back many, many decades.” He said the term “permitted” is used loosely as “in many cases, there aren’t permits,” and “to get a baseline number, we had to make some assumptions” and assign a number.
As for actual flow, the numbers are lower, he said. The current, metered flow for the town to the Westborough Wastewater Treatment Plant is 2.07 mgd based on a five year average, said Payant.
These would include workshops, to take place this summer and fall, that would bring people from across town departments to re-evaluate permitted flow assumptions.
Other short-term actions would include a bylaw and policy review.
These actions would help determine whether the town can lift the moratorium in the spring of 2025. A sewer moratorium was put in place after the Select Board approved a request from the DPW in April to impose restrictions on new sewer connections and expansions.
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Town leaders have said the moratorium would give the town time to better understand the problem and come up with a plan to better allocate sewer flow for residential and commercial properties.
Payant presented an example of a possible workshop discussion — a single-family household is allowed 110 gallons per day, per bedroom. According to Payant, that number is based on the state’s Title 5 septic regulations.
“Title 5 [of the state’s environmental code] provides the standards for on-site sewage treatment and disposal,” said Payant. “Many wastewater systems, including Westborough, use the planning factors in Title 5 to estimate sewage flow requirements. In some cases, Title 5 planning factors, which are intended for septic system development, are overly conservative when applied to wastewater collection systems.”
In going back to the example, Payant said that if the allocation was cut back to 45 gpd, per bedroom, the potential reduction would be 65,000 gpd per 1,000 bedrooms.
Overall, Payant said, “… I feel like we are in a decent place. We have a really good understanding of what’s going on. It needs a little more work.
“It’s not as bad as it might look on this paper,” he said. “This is a really helpful document for us. It gives us the data we need to make some smart decisions for the town.”
The study itself is still being circulated among town staff for comments and recommended edits.
Once incorporated, Payant said, “The memo that captures the outcomes of the evaluation will be posted to our website when it is finalized.”
