State Rep. Michael Costello's office said yesterday that Amesbury will receive $17,056,000 for two different projects. A total of $12 million will go toward upgrading the water treatment plant - the current facility is nearing the end of its 20-year life span - and $5,056,000 will be used to install new water mains, pump stations and water tanks at various locations around Amesbury.I could recall discussions and a vote during the previous Council session about upgrades to our waste water treatment facility but wasn't sure if that included approval of a loan. A quick search on the Town's website got me to minutes from a 10/5/06 FinCom/MC meeting and a 10/10/06 MC meeting where a $500,000 bond issue for a waste water treatment updgrade study was discussed and approved (unanimously). Basically, the Town needs to upgrade its treatment plant to comply with current federal EPA standards. The $.5 million bond was to study how to retrofit our current plant to bring it into compliance with EPA standards. At the workshop and public hearing, the next step after doing the study would be to apply for a loan from the Commonwealth's Drinking Water State Revolving Fund to finance the upgrade. The study was done and the $17M award from the SRF program the other day is next step.
To accept the loan from the Commonwealth, however, the Municipal Council will have to first approve it. Checking out the regulations for this program--Drinking Water State Revolving Fund regulations--local approval is not required before a community can apply for the loan but is required to complete the application. Reading the regulations, it looks like approval needs to be made before June 30, 2008, so I assume that the Mayor will be presenting this as a measure to the Council between now and then.
I'll have a few questions, when this comes up. Judging from the story in the Daily News, it looks like the scope of this loan has expanded since the discussions in October 2006. Those discussions focused on an upgrade to comply with EPA regulations and the SRF loan request was expected to be $10-12M, as opposed to $17M. The current loan includes water main work around the Elm St./Rt. 110 intersection + additional pumping station and tank work. We should be assured that these additional items are part of our Capital Improvement Plan. I'll also want to know what the impact will be on the water rate and our overall debt-to-revenue ratio. On the plus side, the interest rate on this loan is very good (2%) and retrofitting an existing facility is good.
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