01/29/1999 SEWER COMMISSION Minutes

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r MASHPEE SEWER COMMISSION MEETING MMUTES *,.• FLAY, JANUARY 29, 1999 'off Present: Tom Fudala, Dennis Bal arini, John Cahalane, Dr. Brian Howes WTERVIEwS Present, representing Stearns and wheler were Lathan Meeks, 'll Hall, project director, Wayne Perry,Bill Arcieri, independent consultant. Nathan would coordinate this project, coordinate with Dr. Howes and the town and would be the coordinator for environmental docurnents review. Where are a total of 15 team members. It is a large team but expertise is needed in wastewater, hydro geology capabilities, GIS, which they use extensively. The consider the key issues,to be: Water quality in Mashpee River and Popponesset Bay, nitrogen loading to the bays, shellfish closures, development pressures, high cost of rededication, cost effectiveness, regulatory approval, private treatment plants and management issue. At the end of this process,there will be a recommended plan but it needs to be defensible. They believe the environmental review process should begin at the start of this prof ect. Management issues: Mashpee is asking private developers to pick up a big piece of the burden. It all comes down to affordability. This evaluation will also be initiated early in the process, i.e formulation of a Sewer District. Project Approach: developing alternatives for nitrogen removal in the 2 watersheds,based on target values provided by r. Howes and coordination of modeling of proposed alternatives. They will model the performance and cost and will use the cost effectiveness analysis to come up with the hest solution. There will be many different alternatives because some will include participation by other toms and some will assume no participation by other towns. - full use of GIS information from Mashpee and surrounding towns. Mashpee has good GIS information to incorporate into Stearns and Wheler's. The use of the 160 planing areas is more work than they have seen clone in other towns. GIS data exists in detailed form for Barnstable, Mashpee and Falmouth and less detailed in Sandwich. GIS offers the opportunity to look at alternatives to mitigate that nitrogen. They will develop a database specific to the two watershed covering the towns. -Alternatives: Stearns and wheler has a detailed cost analysis for technology and management scenarios. They have done a lot of work on Cape Cod in Falmouth, Chatham and Provincetown. -well injections, subsurface and surface infiltration -mechanical flushing increased public participation and support regulatory and public approval - a key component. They presented a Iist of similarities and differences between riashpee's scope of work and the work, they have done in Chatham, Barnstable, Plymouth, Provincetown and Falmouth.