Town staff told the Town of Concord advisory board on Jan. 6 that the Division of Capital Asset Management (DCAM) has formally offered the municipal wastewater treatment facility tied to the former MCI property to the town, and that the town has a roughly six‑month window to respond.

A staff‑level meeting is scheduled for Jan. 17, officials said, to allow the town’s public‑works director and the engineering consultant to pose technical questions directly to DCAM and to compare capital‑needs assessments. The stated aim is to clarify deferred capital requirements and to inform any negotiation over the facility’s disposition.

In the meeting, a staff speaker summarized the status: the state “has formally offered the wastewater treatment facility to us with a 6 month time frame for response, which times out in mid February.” The staff speaker said consultants engaged by the town had bucketed capital needs into time frames—near term (1–3 years), mid term (3–5 years) and long term (10+ years)—with an estimated deferred capital total that staff described as part of ongoing technical work.

Board members questioned whether the scheduled Jan. 17 session would be broader than the advisory board; staff clarified it was expected to be a DCAM coordination meeting primarily for town staff and consultants, not a public advisory‑board hearing. Paul from DCAM “weighed in” during the meeting and suggested the facility and related municipal services might be better suited at an alternative town site, comments staff described as part of DCAM’s municipal‑facilities planning discussion.

Consultants who have performed engineering assessments (named in the transcript as Wesson and Samson) are expected to participate in follow‑up technical work if the town moves forward. Staff also said a surplus properties team at DCAM is being set up to transition properties from the current operator (the Department of Correction), and town staff do not expect that process to speed up the decommissioning timeline for the prison site (the Department of Correction’s decommissioning is still expected to take about a year).

The advisory board asked staff to keep members informed of technical findings and to report back after the Jan. 17 coordination meeting. The board also discussed related topics: the status of mapping and aerial information collection for the site, the possibility of future funding phases to address capital needs and the interfaces between the wastewater disposition, broader site planning and the consultant procurement process the town is simultaneously conducting.

Staff and the board noted that any conversation about funding or reuse will depend on the technical assessment and on subsequent decisions about whether the town will accept ownership, negotiate a transfer, or decline the asset.