The contentious town review of a proposed large-scale housing development on 35 acres off Church Hill Road has inspired a growing contingent of worried residents in the area to study up on sewer systems. The Water and Sewer Authority (WSA) is considering a request from the developer of the multifamily housing complex to extend the sewer district to include the entire parcel instead of just a small portion adjacent to Church Hill Road. The residents are crying foul, saying the request perverts the original purpose of the sewer system serving the center of town.

The issue, which was raised at a WSA hearing March 12 and will likely be reemphasized at the continued hearing on April 1, is that the sewer system in the town’s central district was created in the 1990s at the order of state environmental officials to address groundwater contamination caused by failing septic systems. It was not intended to facilitate development like the sewer lines extended from Danbury to serve Hawleyville in the area of Exit 9. Just the opposite. It was intended to mitigate one of the effects of development — polluted groundwater.

The wastewater treatment plant that serves both the town’s central district and state facilities in the Fairfield Hills area, including the Garner Correctional Institution, allocates the nearly million gallon/day capacity of the plant under the terms of an intergovernmental sewerage agreement. That agreement gives Newtown a daily wastewater treatment capacity of 332,000 gallons. Most of that allocation is taken up by existing sewer system hook-ups. The unallocated capacity is just 23,410 gallons/day — barely over half of what the developers of the housing complex say they need. Barring a reallocation of capacity from the state, which a spokesman for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said last week was “not likely,” the WSA is being asked to provide sewer service that is literally beyond its capacity.

The sewer system in the center of Newtown was never intended to serve as a catalyst to economic development, housing development, or any other kind of development. It was intended to clean up the effects of development that posed and continue to pose a threat to public health. The WSA needs to follow through on that original intention and work with developers to treat and dispose of their anticipated wastewater within the approved service area of the current system and within the limits of its remaining unallocated capacity.