EMC Seeks $5.5 Million in Sewer Abatements

Beginning at 6:30PM on Monday, August 13, representatives from EMC will go before the Board of Selectmen to argue their requests for sewer abatements on several EMC properties located in the South Street industrial area of Hopkinton.

EMC is requesting sewer abatements on a total of 15 different properties that total just over $5.5 million dollars. Included in that list are two main buildings located at 176 and 228 South Street as well as other buildings on South Street and Hayward Street.

For the some properties, EMC is arguing that the “betterments cannot be assessed to the properties for a system that is more expensive than what is necessary to serve the properties.”

EMC’s abatement application states, “We assert that it would be a less expensive alternative to allow the properties to connect to the Hopkinton-Milford-Intermunicipal System (IMS). Accordingly, the Town may not asses the properties for the Fruit Street WWTF, which is a more costly sewer alternative than the IMS, and as such, is invalid and should be abated.

For other properties, EMC asserts that the Town is “double-counting” the properties as full users of both systems, although no flow from the properties can be routed to both systems at the same time.
The end result, according to EMC, is that the Town is imposing an assessment on these properties for excess capacity that cannot be utilized.

And the final argument which applies to the properties at 176 and 228 South Street is that “these properties cannot be subject to an assessment for the Milford interconnection or the Fruit Street WWTF because they were not permitted to tie into the system such that they could utilize the Milford connection, leading them to construct their own private wastewater treatment capacity.” A second argument for these two properties also states “that the restrictions on the amount of flows that can be sent to Milford effectively prevent the Town from ever accepting flows from these properties, and these properties were improperly added to the service area once it was clear that the cost of the Fruit Street WWTF would be higher than projected, in order to defray those additional costs, rather than provide any benefit to the properties.”

The Board of Selectmen will review EMC’s requests for sewer abatements at their meeting on Monday, August, 13 at 6:30PM. According to the posted agenda, the meeting is expected to adjourn at 7:00PM. Agenda is attached below.