At a special meeting Wednesday night, April 10, Wilton’s Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) approved the sewer application for the proposed multifamily apartment building at 131 Danbury Rd.
The applicant had waited for months for the WPCA to vote on the application, as the Authority has wrestled with questions about how to manage Wilton’s dwindling sanitary sewer capacity.
A key factor in the WPCA’s ability to approve the application proved to be updated information on Wilton’s sewer flows and the Town’s intentions to remedy some of the excess flow in the sanitary sewer system.
Frank Smeriglio, Wilton’s Director of Public Works/Town Engineer, and Christine Kurtz, representing the engineering firm Wright-Pierce, presented the latest information on Wilton’s sewer flows and explained the next steps emerging from an Infiltration and Inflow Study (“I&I”) conducted by the Town.
Smeriglio and Kurtz outlined a plan for nearly $1 million in repairs and rehabilitation that would curb excess flow in the system. They demonstrated how roughly 172,000 gallons per day could potentially be eliminated during peak flow “wet seasons” — and significantly reduce the average annual gallons per day in sewer flow sent to Norwalk for treatment. Under Wilton’s current agreement with Norwalk, there is a limit of 650,000 average annual gallons per day.
The WPCA determined that the anticipated reduction achieved through the I&I repair plan would be sufficient to allow the development at 131 Danbury Rd. to proceed without the risk that Wilton would exceed the contractual flow limit.
The WPCA can fund the $1 million needed for the rehabilitation plan from the roughly $10 million it has already set aside for sewer funding.
First Selectman Toni Boucher noted that the plan to mitigate the excess flow was a proactive step by the Town — and not dependent on Norwalk granting additional capacity.
“The whole idea of this is to increase capacity, [by] taking care of all of these problems,” Boucher said. “Here, we could actually do something ourselves to improve our situation… this is a really, really good conversation to have.”
However, Boucher also recognized the capacity questions aren’t going away.
“There’s still a lot of ground to cover with regards to the overall capacity because even with this [rehabilitation plan], we will be stretched. We’ll still be very close to capacity, given the number of applications that we have. So there is a lot of work to still do,” Boucher said.
The WPCA’s approval of 131 Danbury Rd. was conditional, as outlined in a memo from Smeriglio. Among other things, the application is subject to comments from Norwalk about the proposed development. The memo also informed the applicant that Wilton is approaching Aquarion to potentially obtain water usage information as a means of monitoring actual flows compared to theoretical estimates, and potentially resulting in a different sewer fee structure.
Boucher had a message for those observing WPCA’s recent discussions.
“As you can tell, we’re trying very hard to move forward with a number of these applications,” she said. “We are constrained, we will be continuing to be constrained, but we’re doing everything that we can to help.”