Bangor outlines wastewater challenges, consent‑decree work and upcoming interlocal agreement talks with Hermon and Hampden

Amanda Smith, director of Water Quality Management for the City of Bangor, told the city’s Infrastructure Committee on April 23 that the department treats about 3,000,000,000 gallons of sewage a year and faces intensive work during the final five years of a 15‑year EPA consent decree.

Smith said the department operates one of the state’s largest and oldest sewer systems, with roughly 150 miles of public sewer lines and numerous private lines. “We are heading into the last 5 years of a 15 year EPA consent decree, so it's going to get busy really fast,” she said. She described two departmental divisions — a Sewer Collection System Division and the Treatment Plant — and said the treatment plant is a grade 5, biological system that requires licensed operators.

The nut of Smith’s presentation was operational capacity and compliance. She said the city has been focusing on succession planning after a wave of retirements and turnover since 2019. “Our sewer crew average tenure is 2.7 years,” Smith said, and the plant recently added a third grade‑5 licensed operator, bringing the grade‑5 operator count to three. Smith credited staff for exceeding consent‑decree inspection targets: the decree requires inspecting and documenting 10% of lines annually (about 15 miles), yet the department inspected more than 27 miles and…