Sewer study stinks, say selectmen
BY PETER A. SUTTERS JR. INDEPENDENT WRITER
A Cambridge firm paid $5,000 by the town to produce a study on future sewer rates was quickly sent back to the drawing board.

At last Wednesday's Board of Selectmen meeting, Joseph Ridge of Camp Dresser and McKee, Inc. presented the study and was asked for more information.

"I was very disappointed in the study," said selectman Allen Reinhard. "It seems all he did was go to a computer and pull out some formulas and presto, here are the numbers. I don't know what we paid him, but it was too much."

Selectmen asked Ridge for information more specific to Nantucket to come up with a more accurate picture of what the island will face in terms of sewer fees.

"We want those numbers as soon as possible," Reinhard said. "We would like to have them to look at as we go through the budget and before we make recommendations.

Selectman Brian Chadwick was equally disappointed with the report.

"It was poorly written and there were quite a few things that were inaccurate," he said. "What it does say, at the end of the day, until such time the board allows more of the needs areas to be sewered, the costs are going to be higher for everyone else that is currently on sewer."

Camp Dresser and McKee was hired to update its own analysis from a similar report in 2004 and in the "Methodology & Assumptions" portion of the six page report, CDM said it used fiscal year 2007 budget figures, customer data, existing debt service schedule and property tax data along with industry standards to extrapolate the user fees presented to the board.

The report also said "economic and financial assumptions" were used, but that "for the purpose of this study, CDM believes the assumptions it has used are prudent."

Board members also said the study came up woefully short on the estimated cost of the construction of the proposed Madaket Wastewater Treatment Plant, which is still in the early stages of planning. CDM included a cost of $17 million for the plant, but board members said the true number, if the plant is built, would more likely be three times as much and will get more expensive the longer the project is put off.

Despite the study's shortfalls, the picture it did paint of increases in sewer fees is daunting for ratepayers. The study concluded that fees are likely to double in the next two years from an average of $610 for 2008, to $1,110 in 2009 and $1,232 in 2010.

Ridge did set out a "rate smoothing" plan that would increase fees slowly over a few years, but in the end the totals were the same. The rate increase was due to increases in revenue requirements if the treatment plant was to be paid under the current system of two-thirds by user fees and one-third

from taxpayers. I