CCT has determined, based on a review of town records, that the strategy for this nitrogen removal project engineered by Town Manager Hinchey and Director of Health & Environment Duncanson had as a key component NEVER to put the full Comprehensive Wastewater Management Plan (CWMP) project calling for a big city centralized sewer system before a town meeting for a vote. Their decision to do this was no doubt because of the huge cost which they did not want taxpayers to focus on, to say nothing of the disruption caused over 20 years of construction. They wanted to avoid the question that would naturally arise, "Can't this problem be solved less expensively?"

Records of the Citizens Advisory Committee from 2007 had Duncanson telling CAC members that the full CWMP would never be put before a town meetng. CAC members had wondered whether such an expensive plan could get through town meeting. Apparently at least some CAC members questioned that strategy, so Nathan Weeks of Stearns & Wheler was brought into the next meeting to assure CAC members that some towns did it one way, some another, so the "piecemeal" approach would be just fine. So, innocuous-seeming bits and pieces would be put before successive town meetings (e.g., funds for determining the extent of nitrogen pollution and how much needed to be removed) until some key vote by an unknowing and uninformed town meeting, would become the point from which there would be no turning back.

Director of Health & Environment Duncanson considers the Article 14 vote at the 2009 Annual Town Meeting (ATM) to be that point of no return for proceeding with the entire CWMP that would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. We know that because he told state bureaucrats that in an official document this year.

What voter knew that? If Duncanson is right, how were the voters tricked into in effect voting for the entire CWMP calling for expenditures of $240 million plus interest and inflation, 110 miles of sewer piping, 88 pump stations and more than a thousand seven-foot tall grinder pumps for the 4000+ properties to be sewered?

CCT's investigation has shown that false information was provided in the 2000 ATM Warrant and what the SEC calls "misrepresentation by omission" occurred. Material information that is important in decision-making was withheld from the Warrant.

Town officials did not disclose in the Warrant or in oral discussion (or in any official document CCT has seen) that their plan was immediately, in two years, to enlarge the capacity of the wastewater treatment plant to its 20-year capacity; what that means is for the plant to operate efficiently sewer piping of the entire planned area would have to be installed for it to operate efficiently and to remove the nitrogen from the wastewater it is supposed to. In other words, town meeting voters would be forced to vote for more sewer expansion at subsequent town meetings for the entire $240 million plan, whether they wanted to or not. So voters and taxpayers would be stuck. According to engineers with whom we have consulted, there could be no turning back without substantial additional cost to unwind much of the enlargement which had been done.

CCT formally called these misrepresentations to the attention of the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affiars. The misrepresentation that everyone can see for himself is on pp. 105-106 of the Warrant. Charts provided to show projected debt service costs for the sewer in the nature of bar graphs understated the 2007 $240 million principal lcost estimate of Stearns & Wheler by one-third. In addition, no interest or inflation was included in the bar graphs for the decades of financing and repayment. At that time and now there is no such thing as zero interest loans.

As a consequence, the vertical bar graphs supposely showing the impact of sewer financing and repayment over decades should have been 2.7 times taller than were shown. These falsely short bar graphs were compared to bar graphs representing current debt service to make it appear that the sewer costs would not be too bad for taxpayers. In fact, they should have been almost three times as tall as was shown.

The Secretary stated that their regulatory process had been completed and that the misrepresentations at town meeting were outside their regulatory review process, even though the misrepresentations with respect to that town meeting vote were the single most important step in advancing the sewer project from the planning stage to implementation. In other words, the Secretary decided to ignore misrepresentations that, if deliberate, are fraudulent, even though they were the key step moving the CWMP from planning into implementation. Our conclusion is that the misrepresentation was deliberate.

UPDATE: Additional investigation has revealed that the same misrepresentation was made to the Board of Selectmen earlier at its meeting of March 17, 2009, thus strengthening the case for this being a deliberate understatement and therefore misrepresentation of the costs of the CWMP.