Town Public Works Director Fred Hurley said this month the $3.8 million Hawleyville sanitary sewer system expansion project, which started last June, is essentially complete, with more than 98 percent of the planned construction having been performed. In February 2014, voters at a town meeting approved expanding the Hawleyville sewer system in an 81-11 vote. Centerplan Construction Company of Middletown was the contractor for the sewer expansion project.

Most of the expansion project involved the installation of low-pressure sewer lines, through which sewage will be sent from users' properties by grinder pumps into the original Hawleyville sewer system, which started operation in 2001. The original system employs conventional gravity-powered sewers and a force main powered by a sewage pumping station. The wastewater is treated at a regional sewage plant in Danbury.

Sections of the expanded sewer system use gravity-powered sewers for waste disposal. Midway Home Estates, an approximately 25-unit mobile home park at 160 Mt Pleasant Road, had gravity-powered received sewers installed in the expansion project. Mr Hurley said December 20 that the sewers in the mobile home park are now operational.

At a Water & Sewer Authority (WSA) meeting earlier this month, WSA members received a progress report on the Hawleyville sewering project from Fuss & O'Neill of Manchester, the town's consulting engineers on the project.

Pressure testing at some of the properties served by the expanded low-pressure sewer system indicated some leakage problems, most of which occurred at those properties' connection points to the system, resulting in some simple repairs to fix those leaks.

The expanded Hawleyville sewer system will serve about 25 individual properties. Low-pressure sewer lines were installed along sections of Mt Pleasant Road and Hawleyville Road.

The expansion project is intended to stimulate economic development on land near the Exit 9 interchange of Interstate 84, an area that has long been envisioned by local officials as an economic growth area. There are several large undeveloped land parcels there.

Because the project is intended to stimulate economic development, property owners with holdings adjacent to the planned lines may connect to system or not connect, based on their preference.

The town built its much larger gravity-powered central system in the Borough and adjacent areas to resolve longstanding groundwater pollution problems caused by failing septic systems. The central system, which discharges wastewater to a Commerce Road sewage treatment plant, started operation in 1997.

Next spring, Aquarion Water Company is scheduled to extend a water supply line northward from Mt Pleasant Road along the western road shoulder of Hawleyville Road to the Covered Bridge Road site planned for a 180-unit rental apartment complex, a church, and a diner.

That water line installation will require trenching along Hawleyville Road that will later be patched with asphalt, Mr Hurley said.

The Planning and Zoning Commission approved plans for the apartment complex in December 2015.