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09/24/2019 04:30 PMWestbrook’s Water Pollution Control Commission (WPCC) plans to rename itself the Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA), a move that will bring the agency in line with the term used in the Connecticut General Statutes and ease the process it uses to keep current with Connecticut Department of Health regulations. The change would also add another layer of public oversight to any proposed regulation changes. The update to the WPCC regulations will come via a town ordinance. According to Westbrook Environmental Health Technician Shirley Mickens, additional changes to the town ordinances proposed by the WPCC (after consulting with an attorney) include modifying Chapter 18, “Utilities,” Article II to “allow the WPCA to establish regulations as set forth in the state statutes under Chapter 103 Section 7-247.”
The WPCC currently changes its regulations with the approval of the BOS, followed by a public vote via Town Meeting. Its proposed changes to the town’s Code of Ordinances will alter the process somewhat: The director of public health would have to approve any changes to regulations before they were submitted to the BOS. If the BOS approved those changes, they would be presented at a town hearing, where residents would be invited to comment.
“We’re going to present it to [the public], we’ll take their input, and we’ll look at it,” explained WPCC Chair Lee McNamar. “And we can either do one of two things: make the changes and go back to a town” hearing or explain that the WPCA can’t amend regulations as residents have asked because “of the situation that we have.
“Now, [residents] can say, ‘Okay, fine.’ Or they can say, ‘We don’t like it and we’re going to appeal,’” McNamar said.
The appeal would be made to Westbrook Director of Public Health Sonia Marino, who would forward it to the Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH), according to McNamar.
Under the new proposal, the regulations of on-site sewage disposal systems, now listed under Chapter 18, “Utilities,” Article III, would also be moved into a separate document titled “Wastewater Management Regulations of Sewage Disposal Systems” and Article III would be removed.
These proposed changes to the Code of Ordinances were approved unanimously by the BOS but, in order to go into effect, must be approved at a Town Meeting. That meeting will be held on Thursday, Oct. 3, said Mickens.
In an email message, Mickens said she would send a draft of the updated regulations to Harbor News “a few weeks before we hold a public hearing.”
The importance of the WPCC (and WPCA, if that follows) is expected to grow int he near future.
“We’re a septic town with individual septic tanks,” said McNamar. “Community systems are going to be important if the town wants to move forward with any major development.”
As technology advances for sewage systems, he continued, “it’s important that not just one or two or three people say we don’t want it and the town is stuck not being able to do it.
“If you look at all the other towns that are authorities”—such as Old Saybrook and Guilford—”ours isn’t going to be any different than theirs,” McNamar said. “If, for whatever reason, they all decide to build a processing plant at Old Saybrook and run sewers through the towns that don’t have them, we along with Old Saybrook and other towns that are authorities, we would have the same rights and authority as Old Saybrook and Guilford do. Right now, we don’t.
“I’m looking at the 21st century,” he continued. “We’ve got to do this to move forward. Or we’re going to be out of step with the times.”