Sewer And Water Costs

Cloud 5/6 School Cost Estimates

By Jeff White

The Newtown Board of Education is still busy assessing why costs for its proposed 5/6 school may run close to $1 million over budget. Although the school board, with the help of project architects and managers, is attempting to get a handle on the origins of the budget increase, two costs specifically related to the new school are hard to nail down: sewer and water assessments.

According to David Vallerie, a project manager with Strategic Building Solutions, his firm was not able to give a sewer assessment estimate in its project budget because it is unclear whether the school would draw its sewer capacity from the town, the state, or a combination of the two.

Both the town and the state cosponsored the wastewater treatment system, and divided it in such a way that the town owns approximately 40 percent of the capacity, and the state owns the balance.

The sewer main serving the town runs down along Old Farm Road, which is adjacent to Watertown Hall, the future site of the 5/6 school. Although all buildings on the Fairfield Hills campus have to be allotted sewer capacity from the state, Mr Vallerie suggested that the 5/6 school could be served by a nearby town line.

“We don’t have to run a mile or a mile and a half to connect, the sewer line is right there,” he said.

But it is unclear whether or not the town’s sewer capacity could support a new school.

First Selectman Herb Rosenthal said this week that the new school would have to use the state’s sewer capacity, and assessment costs would have to be part of the greater Fairfield Hills negotiations. “We would have to get the capacity from the state [because the school] is outside of the town’s sewer district,” Mr Rosenthal said.

With these questions persisting, Mr Vallerie said it was too difficult to include assessment costs in the new school’s budget.

“What we have not carried in the budget is what it will cost to negotiate to purchase part of the state’s capacity,” he said. “What our firm is doing is making sure it is clear… that we are not carrying any dollars for the connection fee or the assessment to connect to a plan.”

Dominick Posca, the Buildings and Grounds Supervisor for the school district, said that he estimates the 5/6 school sewer assessment to be close to $440,000. The school district would not pay this figure in one lump sum, but would opt to pay it out over 20 years through its capital plan.

One of the primary reasons the 5/6 school has already seen budget increases is that architects had to take into account the costs of relocating a waterline pipe that connects the Fairfield Hills Water District with the United Water District, from which the town draws. That waterline pipe currently runs right down the middle of where the new school would sit.

Mr Vallerie said that the new school would technically be in the Fairfield Hills Water District, requiring an arrangement with the state to supply the school with water. The current 5/6 school budget only carries the cost of diverting the connecting pipe around the school.

Town officials say that these sewer and water uncertainties will not affect the design and construction of the new school. Public Works Director Fred Hurley suggested last week that there was enough overall capacity for both sewage and water to support a new school, and it was just a matter of who will eventually write the checks for the two assessments.

“There’s no reason to delay the building of the school over these issues. It can go forward,” he said. “How it all shakes out later on a piece of paper is an issue that is obviously yet to be resolved.”

Since the school district traditionally has paid for sewer and water capacities for its schools through its capital plan, assessment fees won’t technically appear on the bottom line of the 5/6 school’s budget. Yet Mr Vallerie pointed out that they are costs directly associated with the new school.

“They are certainly costs of building the 5/6 school. If you don’t build the 5/6 school, those costs wouldn’t be there,” he said. “It’s a question about what pot of money it will come out of.”

“You can’t dig your own well or your own septic system,” he added. “Those aren’t options. When you’re within districts, you have to connect. Our assumption has been and remains that connections are going to be made, we just have to work it out.”