The big story continues to be the $240 million centralized sewer that town officials are planning to build, apparently without any town meeting ever voting on it.

It appears as if town officials are content to just use the vote this past May for a $60 million upgrade of the treatment plant as the only vote they need to plow ahead with their centralized sewer plan for the whole town.

Why is that, you may ask?

Once that upgrade to the treatment plant is done, in just two years from now according to the plan, we've been told voters will be forced to go ahead with the $240 million big city sewer or “waste” the money spent on the upgrade. The huge enlargement of capacity will require lots of wastewater to run properly. Their apparent strategy on this is just as clever as how they whisked the treatment plant upgrade through town meeting on a quick vote to see if the town could get “free” federal stimulus money, which required having all approvals in hand and being “shovel ready” by the deadline of February 17, 2010. Nobody understood the implications of that vote. CCT said at the time, well, let's get all the facts out on costs, stimulus and everything else and maybe in December or January a town meeting could vote to ratify or rescind the May vote, which was cast by an uninformed electorate. It isn't going to happen, if town officials have the say.

Indeed, as of this writing, taxpayers have still not been told what the true costs to them will be. But now maybe there's not even the need to rush for the stimulus money. The White House seems to have dropped the deadline and promised worthy projects will get funded after February 17.

As for costs, Dr. Duncanson made the astounding statement to a Cape Cod Times reporter last Saturday that the average homeowner would pay only $175 a year on average for 20 years for his sewer, which doesn’t compute. That amount wouldn’t even cover the average hook-up charge of $6,500 over 20 years let alone his cost for the sewer! This extraordinary assertion motivated CCT to do its own calculation. We found that for the average homeowner who gets sewered, the costs will be in the neighborhood of $2200 a year, not $175, on average over the first 20 years of financing. Get the details. (Payments will continue for another30 years.) See our analysis!)

We’re asking that town officials issue detailed financial information to support Duncanson’s claim or provide the real cost information for all property owners.

Again, the town should stop rushing the taxpayers along.

This is the biggest expense in the history of Chatham. Already, Chatham spends more per capita on capital projects than any other town on the Cape. Outstanding bonds to be paid off are now about $30 million. Imagine adding $240 million plus in debt to that! Multiplying debt eight-fold!

And we're in the middle of a great recession. Last spring CCT urged town officials to defer non-emegency capital spending in light of the dire economic situation, but they decided to press ahead anyway with the PD/Annex and this massive sewer project. The debt service costs for these two projects will be driving the property tax up in the not too distant future.

This project should not go into the ground until taxpayers have had a chance to be fully informed and a town meeting vote is held. But town officials have goine ahead and put out contract bids, which now have been opened. They are in the process of negotiating contracts with the aim of getting the treatment plant underway before taxpayers learn of the costs they will be forced to pay.

There are low cost systems that do the nitrogen reduction job just as well. They can be integrated into the sewer plan to save as much as $100 million in taxpayer money. Thus far, town officials have refused to evaluate them.

Selectmen have a fiduciary duty to spend taxpayer money wisely and they have not demonstrated they are doing that.

CCT does not believe chasing $10 million in stimulus money and ignoring $100 million in possible savings for taxpayers is responsible stewardship. The midst of a great recession is no time for wasteful spending, no time for such an expensive sewer system when the job can be done for so much less.

Let's stop and do this right. Many good Chatham citizens worked hard to identify the nitrogen problem and map out what needed to be done. But they never were shown any low cost alternatives that can reduce nitrogen as well as the big city sewer systems and cost far less to build and operate. All in all, they are better environmentally, are cheaper and can be built in much less time with far less disruption. Good information was presented at the recent forum in Mashpee on "Rethinking Sewers." Also, check this.

Town officials should inform taxpayers of the true costs of the proposed centralized sewer for their properties. Taxpayers should learn what alternatives can be utilized to bring the costs down. They should have the right to vote on the entire nitrogen reduction plan when it is finalized, hopefully at much less cost than town officials are currently proposing.

Instead, it appears as if town officials are buying a white elephant for the town's taxpayers and, worst yet, the taxpayers don't even know how much they are going to have to pay for it.

Chatham may be the last Cape Cod town to buy a centralized sewer system. Other Cape towns are looking at alternatives to big city sewer systems. These expensive systems just aren't needed to solve the excess nitrogren problem. Officials in Falmouth, Mashpee and Orleans want to save taxpayer money and aren't convinced they need to buy a white elephant as Chatham is doing.