Bangor officials outline options and higher costs to address Kmart and Perry Road pump stations

The Infrastructure Committee was told Monday that two of Bangor’s five sewer pump stations need major work, with choices that will raise project costs and affect future development and the city’s capital improvement plan.

Amanda Smith, director of water quality, told the committee the Kmart pump station — in service about 40 years and serving an area from Home Depot and Stillwater Avenue to Longview Drive and the Bangor Mall Boulevard — is at capacity and “tired.” A 2023 capital improvement plan allocation of $1,700,000 covered a pump-station upgrade; engineering firm Haley Ward later found a downstream bottleneck under the interstate could be upsized so the pump station could be eliminated. Smith said the total cost to eliminate the station and upsize the downstream line would be about $3.5 million, higher than the original single-station upgrade estimate.

Smith also described the Perry Road pump station as “about three times the size” of Kmart’s and said it has experienced “significant failures to the point that it's had multiple sewer overflows.” That station sits on constrained land near a tributary and a steep embankment; staff reported a new site roughly 800 feet down the road would be required to accommodate capacity for future development. Smith said the city is currently unable to issue sewer-capacity statements for developers in that area until capacity issues are resolved.

Why it matters: committee members emphasized the projects’ effect on housing and on environmental risk. Perry Road’s repeated failures and overflows create both development constraints and environmental concerns; Kmart’s options trade a lower-cost pump-station upgrade for a more expensive downstream fix that could remove the station entirely.

Smith said the city competitively procured evaluations from Haley Ward to analyze operational issues and theoretical build-out for future development. "Perry Road handles or serves a much bigger area of Bangor," she said, and the firm concluded relocation was needed to accept additional development flows. On Kmart, Smith said, "they could [eliminate the pump station], and it would be less expensive than doing both the pump station upgrade and a small sewer gravity project." (Quoted language drawn from the committee’s presentation.)

Councilor Leonard asked when staff would present an equipment-condition spreadsheet; Smith said she keeps a living document that shows component condition and that staff will provide more detail. City Manager Laura (last name not specified in the record) reminded the committee the sewer enterprise is funded through sewer user rates rather than general tax revenue and that the city remains under an EPA consent decree that also affects project sequencing. "Our consent decree...the EPA's focus with us is to stop CSOs, the combined sewer overflows. They're not looking at the Perry Road pump station when it fails during a rain event," she said, adding that a recent EPA change to a financial-capability formula may allow reconsideration of some consent-decree items.

Staff next steps include further capital-improvement plan updates during the upcoming budget season, a separate capacity study RFP for targeted development areas, and additional cost estimates. Smith said some ARPA funds have already been secured and that both pump stations will be revisited in the FY26 plan with larger cost expectations.

No formal committee vote or directive to adopt a particular project was recorded at the meeting; items were discussed for inclusion and prioritization in the forthcoming budget/CIP cycle.