Sewer Department
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Mission Statement
The mission of the Eastport Sewer Department is to collect and treat the wastewater that is generated in the City of Eastport. The wastewater is treated to meet or exceed the limits set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the State of Maine Department of Environmental Protection. We are also charged with the proper disposal of all bio-solids that are generated by the treatment process.
Organization dynamics and description
The Sewer Department is a department of the City of Eastport, not a separate district. The users fund one hundred percent (100%) of the operation and the maintenance of the department. They also pay forty percent (40%) of the debt retirement of the bonds for the Sewer Department.
The City Council sets the user fees. The user fees are based on the cost of the operation and maintenance costs of the treatment plant and collection system.
The Wastewater Treatment Plant is in operation twenty-four (24) hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five (365) days per year. The treatment plant is manned Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. On the weekends and holidays, an operator must come into the treatment plant to take the flow readings, do the laboratory tests, and check the plant. At all other times, there is an alarm system that monitors the treatment plant and the pump stations. The alarm system reports problems directly to the operators via pagers and to the Town's Communications Department at the Police Station.
The Wastewater Treatment Plant processes approximately 122 million (122,000,000) gallons of wastewater and 172 thousand (172,000) gallons of septic waste. The wastewater treatment process generates approximately 2 million two-hundred-thousand (2,200,000) gallons of bio-solids that are composted into approximately one-thousand two-hundred (1,200) yards of compost which are either sold or given away. We sell the compost for three (3) dollars per yard if we load it; if you want to shovel it on by hand, we give it away.
The wastewater treatment plant and compost facility is located at County Road. The collection system has approximately ninety-five thousand (95,000) feet of gravity sewer lines. We also have fourteen (14) major pump stations and ninety (90) grinder pumps that are located throughout the collection system.
The Sewer Department has one full time and one part time employee in operations and one part time person in financial management.
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