Wareham voters back leasing sewer plant land and $1.8 million for public safety radios

WAREHAM Wareham's Fall Town Meeting voted 113 to 46 on Monday, Oct. 26, to let the town lease about 7 acres of town land at 6 Tony's Lane, the sewer plant's address, for up to 30 years. Sewer officials told voters they hope to draw a company that would take the town's sewage sludge and cut a disposal bill of more than $500,000 a year.

The hand count cleared the two-thirds majority needed to declare town land surplus. On the same night, voters moved $1.8 million into a new public safety radio system, approved three-year contracts for police sergeants and superior officers, freed the town to lease or sell the former Decas Elementary School and put $1 million in Community Preservation money toward protecting about 348 acres of cranberry bogs. The meeting finished all 18 articles and dissolved, the town's video of the session shows.

The sewer plant land

Scott Kraihanzel, director of the Water Pollution Control Facility, said the lease could bring in one of three companies that use pyrolysis, which heats sludge into a product called biochar. The town now pays "over a half a million dollars" a year to haul and dispose of its sludge, he said. The nearest place it goes, in Woonsocket, R.I., is closing, and the next closest is in Ohio. "I don't want to raise the rates," he said, pointing to the $36 million plant upgrade and a $27 million force main planned for Sandwich Road.

A company on the site would take Wareham's sludge for free, and the town would get part of the tipping fees other communities pay, Kraihanzel said. He said no such plant runs in Massachusetts and pointed to one in Rhode Island.

Opponents raised the odor and the truck traffic a sludge business could bring. One resident called pyrolysis "essentially a low oxygen incinerator" and said tractor-trailers of sludge from Cape Cod would have to use Depot Street, and neighbors on and near Lynwood Avenue described the plant's smell, one saying it kept her neighborhood from holding cookouts and birthday parties this summer. Kraihanzel said odors have been bad through two years of construction and that trucks would arrive covered and unload inside a building kept under vacuum with odor control.

Sewer Commissioner Scott Soby said he was "quite skeptical" of the value to the town and worried about truck traffic, but added, "unless we have the ability to lease the property, we cannot get a proposal from any of the companies." Sewer Commissioner Sandra Slavin said she does not want her own sewer rate to double to ship sludge to Ohio, and that any lease would go out through the town's normal request for proposals, and the article itself names no tenant.

Town Administrator Derek Sullivan said state Department of Revenue advisers told the town that lease money must go into the general fund, because the land was bought with general fund money. It could reach the sewer budget only through a later Town Meeting transfer, he said.

Radios, contracts and the old school

The radio money is $1.5 million already set aside in the capital stabilization fund plus $300,000 from the town's main stabilization fund, and it passed with no one opposed. Sullivan said the current system has gaps, including a stretch outside Town Hall where officers could not use their shoulder microphones and had to go back to their cruisers. He called it a project of about 18 months and said the town plans to return the $300,000 at the spring Town Meeting once free cash is certified.

The police supervisors' contracts give 2% cost-of-living raises in each of three years, plus increases of 2%, 1% and 1% tied to the state's new police certification rules, Sullivan said. They also return education pay to the Quinn Bill percentages. He said they cover about 10 positions and cost about $67,000 in the first year, money already in the budget, and voters approved them unanimously.

The Decas vote confirms the Select Board's custody of the former school at 760 Main St., including the power to lease or sell it, which Sullivan said a 2021 Town Meeting vote had clouded. Fuel and electricity cost about $100,000 last year while GATRA used part of the building, he said, and insuring it empty would cost about $75,000 a year. The town assesses the property at about $13.9 million, mostly the building. He named an indoor sports complex as one idea and said a bid process could take six months to a year. The moderator declared it passed by a two-thirds voice vote.

Bogs, parking and the rest

The $1 million for the Lower Agawam River Conservation Project buys a permanent conservation restriction, with $400,000 from the Community Preservation open space reserve and $600,000 from its undesignated reserves. Slavin, treasurer of the Community Preservation Committee, said the Buzzards Bay Coalition is buying the land in a $4.1 million project and the bogs would probably stay in production for two years or more before restoration. It passed by a two-thirds voice vote.

A citizen petition to let businesses in Onset Village, Wareham Village and on Narrows Road count nearby public parking toward zoning minimums failed 104 to 53, short of the two-thirds a zoning change needs. The Planning Board recommended against it and Select Board Chair Sarah Corbitt urged a no vote, while supporters said it would help Main Street businesses. A motion to send it back for study lost 71 to 83.

Dog owners will face a $10 late fee for licenses taken out after April 1 and a $50 fine for licenses not renewed by May 1 under the new licensing bylaw, which like other bylaw changes goes to the state attorney general for approval. Voters also let Police Chief Walter Correia Jr. serve until age 70, spent $75,000 in Community Preservation money to update the housing production plan and expanded the Wareham Village reinvestment subdistrict. A consent vote sent $105,635 in harbor permit fees to the harbormaster's account, $80,827 to school transportation and $34,229.17 to Wareham Media, the town's cable channel.

SC360's guide to the warrant ran before the meeting: Wareham Town Meeting Oct. 26 to weigh $1 million conservation restriction and new police radios.

What happens next

The leases at Tony's Lane and the Decas School go out for proposals through town staff before any tenant is chosen. The Sewer Commissioners next meet Thursday, Nov. 12, at 2 p.m. in Room 520 of the Multi Service Center, 48 Marion Road. The Select Board office answers at 508-291-3100, ext. 3101, and selectboard@wareham.gov, and the Sewer Department at 508-295-6144, with an odor hotline at 844-331-1259.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.