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Wastewater committee seeks planning board support for Route 9 sewer feasibility and district financing study
Summary
The Wastewater Study Committee told the planning board it has found technical feasibility for a Route 9 wastewater system but faces major challenges finding a ground‑discharge site and arranging financing. The committee asked for planning board support for a district improvement financing (DIF) plan and help with outreach and site acquisition.
Sam Stivers, chair of Southborough’s Wastewater Study Committee, updated the planning board on an early feasibility study for a wastewater treatment system focused on the Route 9 corridor. Stivers said technical work indicates a plant of roughly 300,000 to 500,000 gallons per day could serve a portion of Route 9, but that the project faces two critical hurdles: locating a permitted ground‑discharge area and securing up‑front financing.
“We’re still very early in the process,” Stivers told the board, noting potential plant sites have been identified but not secured and that ground discharge is required because discharge to rivers is constrained by EPA rules. He said financing tools under consideration include user fees, betterment charges for direct users and a district improvement financing plan (DIF) that would capture some future tax increment from a delineated area to repay debt.
Stivers asked the planning board to consider supporting the DIF planning work and to help with communications and identifying potential system users and sites. He said the committee hopes to bring a DIF plan forward for a possible town‑meeting vote later in the year if financing and site answers can be found.
Board members probed the geographic scope of the proposed area, which the committee described as a roughly 1,600‑acre DIF initial boundary along Route 9 (about 600 parcels with roughly $800 million in assessed value), and asked how residential taxpayers would be affected. Stivers and colleagues explained betterment and user fees are the more direct financing mechanisms for users and that a DIF typically captures only a portion of incremental commercial tax revenue after a baseline is set.
Committee members warned that the full build‑out would likely be costly and multiyear; they said regional collaboration (conversations with Westborough, Framingham and Marlborough) is ongoing and that grants and loans are being pursued. The committee recommended the planning board remain engaged in communications and consider phased approaches that might make the project more affordable.
Next steps: the wastewater committee will continue site searches, refine its DIF draft, pursue design‑grant funding, and return to the planning board with more specific asks as the plan is refined.
