Sewer plant may bring in more revenue after Town Meeting

The sewer plant may soon lease seven acres of unused property to companies for solid waste handling, eliminating a large town expense and bringing in revenue from surrounding areas. Town Meeting will vote on the first step of this project. 

Sewer Department Director Scott Krainhanzel said the property at the Wastewater Pollution Control Facility is “a waste of space right now,” and voters at Town Meeting will vote on declaring the land as surplus.

The companies interested in the property want to use the land for a solid waste handling plant. They use a method called pyrolysis to make waste biosolids more solid to reuse or dispose of.

The town currently sends waste biosolids to Woonsocket, Rhode Island to be incinerated and sent to a landfill. The pyrolysis method the companies use bake the solid waste into a dry product that has functional purposes, including mixing it into cement to make the material stronger.

Kraihanzel said that soon, the waste can’t be sent to Woonsocket and would need to be sent to a plant in Ohio. If we don’t do this, “the cost is only going to go up,” he said.

Kraihanzel said that leasing the land would remove costs for the plant up to $500,000, bring in solid waste from other communities on Cape Cod and other parts of Massachusetts and help the town sustain its budget or fund future sewer upgrades.

“The geographic location of the town lends itself to being a great spot for all of Cape Cod, anywhere south of Boston and even some places east of Rhode Island for one of these plants to exist,” Kraihanzel said.

The chosen company would be provided a 30-year lease. 

The potential future sewer plant would be well-contained and won’t contribute to odor issues, Kraihanzel said. Building hours will also be maintained so traffic and loud machinery don’t disrupt residents at night.

“If pyrolysis is what the town decides to move forward with, there will be an element potentially of odor mitigation, because I know that’s been a big issue,” Select Board Chair Sarah Corbitt said.