COLRAIN — Three years after the Barnhardt Manufacturing Co. plant on Route 112 closed, the Colrain Sewer District may soon see a solution to its sewer needs. The town plans to hold a public meeting on March 3 to review wastewater treatment options.
The 19 households in the Colrain Sewer District had their wastewater treated by the cotton bleaching plant for years until it closed in January 2023. Since then, the district has been shipping the waste to the Montague Clean Water Facility while working with Westfield-based environmental engineering firm Wright-Pierce to explore long-term solutions.
“We have two designs that the engineers are putting together and looking at them side by side, and there’s one that’s going to be more costly and one that’s going to have a little more risk, but ultimately DEP (the state Department of Environmental Protection), the legislators and the district will decide,” Colrain Town Administrator Diana Parsons said. “I think the idea is that most of the money is not coming from the town, it’s going to come from the state government, so they’re trying to figure out the most affordable way.”
Parsons said the goal is to fund a wastewater treatment system with a mix of state and federal funds, and the town has a $1 million earmark from U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern’s office and a $72,000 grant for the acquisition of property to build a system on.
Although Parsons is unsure of the specific details of each plan, she believes the Colrain Sewer District and representatives of Barnhardt Manufacturing Co. have different ideas on what the system should look like. She added that MassDEP also believes the current sewage treatment system could be repaired to address the district’s needs.
“There were concerns about it being [on the Barnhardt site] for different reasons,” Parsons said. “What DEP is saying is it’s not a new system, it’s a repair, so that changes what you need. It modifies the requirements.”
Last January, Wright-Pierce presented the town with a survey of the current sewer system, funded by a $500,000 Rural Development Fund grant, that indicated it needed to have bricks replaced in the manhole frames and chimney seals replaced, as well as sections of pipes. At the time, Wright-Pierce said repairs to the system would cost at least $261,800.
While it will still take time to secure funding and construct the wastewater treatment system that is chosen, or conduct repairs to the existing one, Parsons said the March 3 meeting could mark the beginning of the end of decades-long sewer conversations.
The Colrain Sewer District was first formed in 1997 to oversee the management of waste from homes on Church Street, High Street, Griswoldville Street and one residence on Main Road. Over the years, Parsons said the town had previously considered possible wastewater treatment options and expanding a town sewer system, which would potentially have allowed for more commercial buildings in the center of town, but did not pursue them.
The meeting to review proposed wastewater treatment plans will be held at Colrain Central School at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 3.