Lebanon WWTP Site Selection — Public Record Archive | Return to main page
Video recording (YouTube) — Meeting began 4:00 p.m., City of Lebanon Administration Building
The committee presented individual member scores for all 20 sites. Site 13 (Rockwood / Hartman Drive, understood to include the combined 13 + 13A parcels of ~140 acres) ranked first by a wide margin — approximately 10–12 points above all other sites. Committee members broadly agreed it is the clear front runner. Site 14 (Permapipe, ~24 acres) ranked second despite falling below the 60-acre threshold, scoring well on infrastructure and access.
The committee voted to remove all sites scoring 32.7 or below from further consideration. Sites eliminated: 6, 9, 11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 15 (by the original motion, though 15 was later reconsidered — see below).
A new site was introduced: Maple Hill Road area (parcel 046 021.01), 150 acres, inside city limits. The developer reached out proactively and indicated willingness to discuss a sale. Key characteristics noted by the engineer: no flood plain, generally flat terrain (~25-ft grade across the site), approximately 25,000–30,000 feet of conveyance required. A motion to add Site 22 to the shortlist passed.
Engineer’s road condition comment (24:21–24:36): Steve Jones noted that Site 22 is directly adjacent to Site 8 and “has some of the same potential issues that we’ve discussed before with road access. Road is a little more narrow, being it is a county road.” This comment was not followed up on by the committee. Maple Hill Road is a county-maintained road, and WWTP construction typically requires heavy equipment and ongoing truck traffic for biosolids removal — conditions that would likely require road improvements, adding cost not reflected in the site scoring.
Note on address: This site was initially misidentified in these notes as “409 Carver Lane.” That address belongs to Site 13 (Rockwood). The Carver Lane reference in the June 29 transcript occurs when engineer Steve Jones describes a potential force main routing option (“potentially a little bit less if you came across through Carver and back down”) — not the site’s address. The parcel was confirmed as 046 021.01 from the motion language at 26:23 in the transcript.
A motion was made to add Sites 15 (old TRW, city-owned) and 17 (city utility site) back to the list on the basis that city-owned property should not be dismissed prematurely. The amendment failed. The committee majority felt the 11-site list plus Site 22 was sufficient to advance.
The committee voted 7–3 to forward 12 sites to the mayor's office to identify willing sellers: sites 13, 14, 2, 7, 5, 16, 1, 8, 3, 12, 10, and 22. The three dissenting votes (Camille Burdine, Caleb Thorne, Dave Dixon) argued that the committee had committed to additional due-diligence before forwarding any list, and that willing-seller status alone should not be the deciding factor.
The committee adopted a revised scoring matrix for the next phase, with six criteria (a proposed "Fatal Flaw" category was removed as too broad):
The engineer (Steve Jones) noted that cost estimates depend on technology chosen, and that smaller sites constrain treatment options and future expandability. The committee directed him to provide cost estimates based on whichever process fits each site's footprint, including 20 MGD phase-one capacity and expansion potential.
Steve Jones (engineer/consultant) made two statements at this meeting that together imply Conventional Activated Sludge (CAS) is the technology the city and utilities department have already selected or strongly prefer — a preference that has not been disclosed to the committee or the public.
Statement 1 — at 14:34–15:17 (during discussion of Site 14 / Permapipe, which is 23.7 acres, well under the 60-acre threshold):
“We have looked at that site, and based on technology chosen, the ability to expand beyond the 20 million gallons a day utilizing that site and the existing site is limited to processes that, through the analysis, were not as highly ranked as those that … some of the other processes that are available for the city.”
The implication: an analysis was conducted that ranked treatment technologies, and the processes that fit a small site (MBR, biofilm reactor) were ranked lower than the processes that require a larger site. Since only CAS requires the 60-acre minimum, CAS was the highest-ranked process in that analysis. The analysis itself has not been shared with the committee or public.
Statement 2 — at 1:07:13–1:08:30 (during second-round matrix cost discussion):
“I’ve been trying to … recommend pieces of property that are large enough to allow for any of the processes that have been discussed with the utilities department. And by going to a smaller property, you may take away the process that the treatment plant operators and the utilities department really potentially prefers.”
This is the clearer of the two statements. The utilities department and plant operators have a preferred process. That preference has been communicated to the engineer but has not been disclosed to the committee or the public as a formal input. Since only CAS requires a 60-acre footprint, the preferred process is CAS by implication. The engineer also disclosed at this meeting that he has 11 different cost estimates for different types of treatment plants — none of which have been shared with the committee.
Taken together, these statements suggest that the 60-acre site threshold — which has driven the elimination of multiple candidate sites — was derived from a technology already preferred by city staff, not from an open technology evaluation conducted by or for the committee. This is directly relevant to the committee’s second-round matrix, which includes “cost of construction, land, and operation” as a criterion: those costs cannot be fairly compared across sites if the technology assumption is fixed but undisclosed.
See also: Treatment Technology and Cost: A Review of the CAS Cost Baseline — pending submission to public record.
Committee member Joey Carmack proposed exploring whether Permapipe (Site 14) could be relocated to Watertown with economic development assistance, freeing the Permapipe site for the city. Caleb Thorne (also JECDB chairman) volunteered to engage the mayor's office and economic development staff on this. A public commenter later noted that Permapipe already sits on a rail line and ships exclusively by truck, casting doubt on the rail-advantage argument for a Watertown relocation.