The proposed capital costs, some of which have been budgeted for in the LCIP, are $66,075,000 for the Federal mandates. The cost to comply with these proposed mandates is astronomical, as shown in Table 2. We have also assembled the increased operation and maintenance costs (O&M) needed to comply with the mandates and the costs for the operation and maintenance of the capital items constructed to meet the mandates (see table 3). The cost to date for O&M to meet Federal mandates is $80,000 and for Federal and State is $590,000. The projected cost for O&M for Federal is $720,000 and for Federal and State is $1,160,000. The proposed cost for O&M for Federal is $2,250,000 and for Federal and State is $2,250,000.

The Clean Water Act has several parts which have, or will, affect the City. The first to impact us was the prohibition of the dumping of snow in the Androscoggin River. This occurred in January of 1986 when we were told by the Army Corps of Engineers that we could no longer have snow dumps in the river. We relocated the snow dump operation, and the relocation did cause a small increase in cost, but in some communities the impact was dramatic.

Our primary concern deals with Combined Sewer Overflows and Non-Point Source Pollution. These have a potentially greater financial impact on us than the SDWA improvements. Based on our conversations with DEP and EPA, we will be required to do a study phase for CSOs, which involves testing and monitoring and recommendations for eliminating CSOs. This has an estimated cost of $700,000. In addition to this, we have to eliminate inflow and infiltration (I/I) from our sewers at a cost of $4,500,000. At this time, there is no formal schedule required to complete the I/I work. The scary part of CSOs is implementing the recommendations of the study. The estimated cost for this is $39,500,000 and includes detention and treatment of combined sewerage. Our information from DEP and EPA indicates that there is no timetable in place to see the recommendations implemented at this time. This capital cost would have a dramatic impact on the taxpayers and sewer rate payers of Lewiston, and, hopefully, this cost could be put off for a period of time or at least phased in gradually over a number of years.

The Non-Point Source Pollution issue is relatively new to Maine, and it is difficult to get a handle on its impact on Lewiston. We do know that the City will have to get a number of storm drain discharge permits from EPA at an estimated cost of $100,000. It has also been proposed that storm drain discharges be treated with chlorination/dechlorination, and we have a preliminary estimate of that cost of $10,000,000. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has informed us that “Best Management Practices" (BMPs) will need to be put into Land Use Codes, which will increase development costs. People will no longer be allowed to discharge directly to a waterway without some form of treatment. Currently, only communities with a population over 100,000 are required to do studies, testing, and monitoring on storm water discharges; we are only required to license certain discharges, as noted. Hopefully, we will not be required to do the study and implement its recommendations until the CSO issues are resolved, except where the resolution of CSOs and storm drain discharges directly complement each other.

The safety-related requirements are generally rules and regulations which were needed, and we enthusiastically endorse them. There has been an impact on our budget, but it is insignificant when compared to the other mandates. This mandate has been included due to its fiscal impact upon the City.

The last mandate deals with Solid Waste Management and is a State mandate, although EPA is expected to be involved with landfills shortly. We have included this State mandate to show that we have other mandates beside Federal ones to meet and that they also have a dramatic impact on the City budget. In this case, the cost is $14,700,000.