Will developer Tony Casella get the sewer access he needs to put up a hotel off Edgecomb's Route 1?

Selectmen expect to vote later this month on Casella's request to connect to a nearby homeowners association's pump station. Selectman Stuart Smith maintains that town rules prevent it.

If the board rejects the request, Casella said he'll call for the town pump station that's been talked about for years but never built.

“I'll demand it,” he said in an interview May 30.

One way or the other, he needs the sewer access if he's going to build the two-story, 48-unit hotel, Casella said. “There's no way that it can operate without it.”

Letting the hotel hook onto the existing private station, with the association's permission, would save the town from spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on one, he said.

A tax incentive deal the town made with a prior developer allows the town to build a pump station, but doesn't require it, Smith said May 30.

The previous night, selectmen talked with a lawyer about local sewer issues, including Casella's plan to use the existing station on Davis Island. Casella's company View Development submitted the application for sewer access.

If that station ever breaks down, Edgecomb would not be responsible for fixing it, town attorney William Dale advised selectmen.

But if a breakdown poses a public safety risk, such as raw sewage spilling out, the town could address the problem and then bill the homeowners association, Dale said.

“We don't want the kids and dogs running through the waste and getting sick,” he said.

Selectmen handed him View Development's application and a related town ordinance to review. The board plans to consider the application June 17.

Fellow board member Jack Sarmanian will be back by then from his relief work with the Red Cross in tornado-torn Oklahoma, Selectman Jessica Chubbuck said.

Dale and French suggested selectmen come up with a playbook for fielding future requests for sewer access. It could go by ratios or be first come, first served, but a plan would avoid the appearance of playing favorites, Dale said.

Wiscasset might be willing to up Edgecomb's sewer capacity beyond the 51,000 gallons a day now allowed, he said.

View Development's sewer application projects the hotel would produce 9,245 gallons a day.

Casella needs selectmen's nod on sewer access as part of his efforts to get the Edgecomb Planning Board's OK for the hotel.

Planning board hurdle

On May 2, the planning board determined View Development's application was incomplete.  

According to Board Chairman Jack French’s May 3 letter to View Development’s consultant Karl Olson, the company needs the selectmen’s sewer access approval.

According to Board Chairman Jack French’s May 3 letter to View Development’s consultant Karl Olson, the company needs the selectmen’s sewer access approval and five other items. Those are: public water access provided by the Wiscasset Water District; more detailed building plans; a traffic impact study; revisions that address Fire Chief Roy Potter’s fire safety concerns; and a copy of a state permit to alter wetlands.

The planning board will not take up the application again until the company has provided all those items, French’s letter states.

Responding in a May 10 letter to French, Olson takes issue with the requirement about Potter’s concerns. An approval that View Development is seeking from the State Fire Marshal’s Office should suffice, Olson argues.

Olson also protests the need for all six items before the application’s completeness is revisited; View Development already fulfilled other requests made at an earlier meeting, he writes. “Adding these items at a following meeting seems to (enable) the board to endlessly add items.”

The same letter asks that planning board vice chairman Barry Hathorne stay out of the application’s review process from now on, for saying the project should not be approved.

“This negative statement was made before … the actual review process started,” Olson writes. “Planning board members should be as unbiased as possible in reviewing any application.’

In a brief interview May 29, Hathorne said he wasn't sure of the exact words he used. “I was not happy with the project, I'll say that,” he said.

Whether or not he will take part in the planning board's dealings on the matter is still up in the air, Hathorne said.

Susan Johns can be reached at 207-844-4633 or sjohns@wiscassetnewspaper.com.