Trailer Park Sewer Bid

Opening Slated

By Andrew Gorosko

The town is scheduled to open competitive bids on Monday, May 12, for the construction of a sanitary sewer line that would link the Meadowbrook Terrace Mobile Home Park on Sugar Street (Route 302) to the town’s central sewer system.

The 12-acre trailer park at 55-61 Sugar Street has had longstanding serious waste disposal problems caused by failing septic systems. Septic systems there for about 60 trailers have had to be frequently pumped to prevent health hazards from occurring.

 Public Works Director Fred Hurley said May 7 that construction to extend a low-pressure sewer to the trailer park should start this summer. Sewer installation is expected to take about two months.

The sewer line would extend from the trailer park to the sewer system at the intersection of West Street and Sugar Street. The 2,100-foot-long, two-inch-diameter low-pressure sewer would be used exclusively by the trailer park. Properties along the sewer line would not be allowed to connect to it.

Federal grant money will be used to subsidize the sewer construction costs.

In February 2002, the state endorsed a $391,000 federal grant being used for the design and installation of sanitary sewer service for Meadowbrook Terrace.

Sewer construction costs are estimated at approximately $300,000. Multiple sewage grinder pumps would be used to eliminate the need for a costly conventional sewage pumping station.

To deal with the serious failures of the trailer park’s three large-scale septic systems, those systems have been regularly pumped out. Without that routine pumping, the town’s health department would have shut down the trailer park.

Town officials view extending a sewer line to the trailer park as a way to maintain the local stock of affordable housing. Although Meadowbrook Terrace may not meet the state’s technical definition of “affordable housing,” the complex, in practical terms, provides affordable housing for local residents.

The town has two other trailer parks, Bay Colony on South Main Street in Botsford, and Midway on Mt Pleasant Road Hawleyville. Neither facility has sewer service.

The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has been working with the town in seeking to solve Meadowbrook Terrace’s sewage disposal problems. The DEP has maintained that the long-term solution is connecting the trailers to the municipal sewer system.

According to DEP documents, the septic failure problems at Meadowbrook date back to at least 1984. DEP issued orders to Meadowbrook in 1984 and in 1990 to correct pollution problems. But despite steps that were taken to solve the problems, septic failures continued to occur. The trailer park has been in business since about 1950.