Clean drinking water will be in the spotlight Nov. 4 when voters will be asked, “Do you favor a $3,400,000 bond issue to support drinking water programs, to support the construction of wastewater treatment facilities and to leverage $17,000,000 in other funds?”
A “yes” vote supports the bond package; and, a “no” vote opposes it.
The $3.4 million bond package would fund two existing loan programs administered by the state.
Half of the money would fund a revolving loan fund that is administered by the Maine Bond Bank and distributed by the Dept. of Environmental Protection in the form of loans to municipalities to construct and upgrade wastewater treatment facilities, according to a summary of the legislation prepared by the attorney general’s office.
The other $1.7 million would fund the state’s drinking water revolving loan fund, which is administered by the Maine Bond Bank and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Loans from this fund would be used to build or improve water supply or treatment systems, or to assist in compliance with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act of 1996.
Proceeds from the bond would leverage approximately $18 million from other sources. That money would be split evenly between the two programs.
The funding, which would pay for 10 years of the two programs, would cost Maine taxpayers $4,241,500, assuming an interest rate of 4.5 percent on a 10-year note.
There are more than 2200 public water systems that provide drinking water to more than half of the state’s population, according to the Maine Drinking Water Program’s Web site.
The loans for the drinking water program are intended for any water system, public or private, that serves year-round residents. Ineligible systems include those that serve a federal facility or that constitute a for-profit system. Also ineligible are systems that do not, for whatever reason, comply with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
In fiscal year 2008, for the first time, the program was able to offer funding for all projects on its primary and backup lists, according to a summary of the program by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Those loans ranged in size from $10,000 to add a backup well system at Fair Haven Camps, a Christian boys’ and girls’ summer camp in Brooks, to $3.5 million to reduce by-products of a disinfection system operated by the Presque Isle Water District.
The wastewater program is intended to design and build new or additions on old wastewater treatment systems. The long-term goal of the revolving loan fund is to become self-sufficient in an effort to improve municipal sewage facilities in perpetuity.
(Statehouse News Service)
