The Marion Capital Improvements Planning Committee got a nose full on Monday at the town’s Wastewater Treatment Plant.
“This is probably the most-complex thing we’ve got going in town that comes in with capital requests, and it’s good for the committee to know the basic pieces,” said the CIPC’s chairman, Dave Janik.
On Monday afternoon, CIPC members toured WWTP facilities, including the two Sequential Batch Reactor (SBR) bays, the recently relined lagoon and two smaller buildings where critical processing takes place.
Along the way, Janik and Casey Barros asked questions of Nathaniel Munafo, who runs the WWTP for the Town of Marion, while Steve Nojeim took notes.
“We always typically do one or two site visits in the summertime. It’s not the same ones every year,” said Janik, whose group was focused last year on the Old Rochester Regional School District. The year before the CIPC visited one of Marion’s drinking-water pumping stations. “The idea behind that is typically to get a look ahead of time at what might be some of the big, capital projects that the department heads are likely to bring in.”
As the late Paul Naiman would explain in his role as chairman, the CIPC is an advisory committee to the town’s Finance Committee and Select Board. By December, its annual interview process fielding the anticipated capital needs of municipal departments is completed. Each capital request necessarily exceeds $10,000 and has at least a five-year lifespan. When the fact-finding in finished, the committee really goes to work.
Organizing this avalanche of information is the beginning of an evaluation process that includes funding prospects (and likelihood for success) of each request. The members return to the committee with a personal rankings list of both FY26 capital projects and those related to each department’s 10-year outlook.
It’s a cumbersome process, but when consensus is achieved the committee puts together a recommendation it will report to both the Finance Committee and Select Board by the end of January 2025. Separate lists will address both FY26 and 10-year outlooks, and all things related to the Department of Public Works get their own rankings lists. In all, 35 to 40 projects are reviewed in any given year.
Beyond the CIPC, Town Meeting warrant articles will note whether the FinCom and Select Board recommend voter approval. Monday’s visit to the WWTP was the beginning for the committee.
“In this case, there’s a dual purpose,” said Janik. “Nathaniel gets to tip us off on what he may be thinking about. Now we know there’s a lot of things on his mind, but it really depends on what the regulators are going to drive home that this is what you need to get done.”
The reason is Marion’s Water/Sewer enterprises present the most involved, layered and complicated process, as some capital projects are driven by the need to maintain compliance with state and federal regulations, and those outcomes leverage which projects will be prioritized.
“I put in 11 requests last year and I got maybe four or five,” said Munafo, noting that a lot of the remaining several requests are alive. “If I can find that alternative funding source, if I can find a grant that fits it, that’s something we’ll try to do. … If we can do that and not have to present to Capital, that’ll be good.”
Grant funding is a major driver, and compliance is key to unlocking eligibility. The Creek Road Pumping Station is up for a grant, but if it doesn’t come through the station will probably be on Water/Sewer’s wish list for FY26. A potential Coastal Zone Management grant will determine how Marion will fund improvements to the Silvershell station.
“The plan is dependent upon what (the regulators) are asking for,” said Munafo. “In the (Comprehensive Wastewater Management Plan), we investigated a number of different scenarios and options about how to deal with the bigger-picture issues we’re talking about. This plan that we chose is very dependent on are the regulators going to allow us to do the things we’re asking, and they have their own timetables on that sort of thing, and they can certainly say no.
“They regulate flow in and of itself as if it’s almost another pollutant. For our standpoint, in order to do some of the things we’d like to do like potentially tying in ‘needs neighborhoods’ that are excellent candidates for being on (town) sewer, we need to have some more capacity that we can discharge.”
Munafo says the WWTP can treat substantially more flow than it is permitted to discharge.
“If I really push it, we can push about a million gallons a day through the plant if everything lines up right, but we’re only allowed to average 588,000 gallons a day out the back end,” said Munafo. “In asking them for additional flow, they then start taking into account concerns that additional flow is going to contain additional items of concern.”
Munafo confirmed that the new residential projects planned off Route 6 near the Wareham line both fit into Marion’s current permit and that their developers agreed to support treatment of the resultant addition of infiltration and inflow (I/I).
Once fully treated, Marion’s wastewater goes through the woods, cuts across Route 6 near Abel’s Way, enters a drainage ditch and then goes out to sea through the saltmarsh.
“Nothing from our plant that goes into the harbor and certainly not coming out of here that’s not treated,” said Munafo.
The Marion Capital Improvements Planning Committee was scheduled to meet on Wednesday night and is likely to set a meeting for October 2.
Marion Capital Improvements Planning Committee
By Mick Colageo