No commercial entity may take more than 10,000 gallons capacity per day, which is the amount that has been requested by Overlook Masonic Health Center.
Title 5 of the state Environmental Code, which regulates sewage treatment systems, uses a formula that sets residential wastewater discharge at 110 gallons per bedroom, per day.
Water-Sewer Administrator Steven Wandland said that the property owners who are not connected but who have been assessed a betterment are the priority and will soon receive a letter with instructions to tie in within one year or the capacity will be given to the next in line.
“Once we hit 100,000, the moratorium is back on,” Wandland said yesterday.
Commissioners have enacted the moratorium in June 2004, when an engineering study reported a plant upgrade was required to process more than its current 250,000 gallons of waste per day.
The wastewater treatment plant was constructed to process 450,000 gallons capacity per day but has not reached the full capacity because of the high strength of effluent received from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority’s two Charlton service areas.
Wandland credits plant operator Woodard & Curran to deliver the 100,000 extra gallons per day of capacity by tweaking the system.
“They have done remarkable things; they have given 100,000 to us,” he said. “Capacity-wise, we are certainly able to process the gallonage, but it is the load factor, as we call it, that requires more equipment.
The equipment needed is part of a $3.5 million plant upgrade approved by town meeting voters in March 2007. The project is out to bid.
