CROMWELL — Homeowners living on the northern and eastern side of Syracuse Lake received a mailing the week of Jan. 16 including notice of Turkey Creek Regional Sewer District’s proposed installation of sewer service and a questionnaire asking residents if they are in favor of receiving the service.

According to the letter, TCRSD is considering installing a force main sewer line “within the road right of way,” running along North Shore and East Shore Drive; it included a map and stated, “The district does not intend to install sewers in this area if the residents are not in favor of having sewer service.”

If constructed, each homeowner connecting to the force main will be responsible for the installation of a new grinder pump station; the electrical connection from the household to the pump and a low-pressure 2 inches in diameter lateral pipe connecting to the force main.

Homeowners would also be required to abandon their existing septic system — usually entailing pumping the septic tank out and filling it with sand.

Finally, each homeowner would be responsible for the payment of a “one time connection and availability charge to the district,” as well as a monthly payment of the sewer use rate.

The questionnaire, to be returned by Feb. 23, asked homeowners two questions: 1. Are you in favor of receiving sewer service at this residence? 2. How urgent do you need sewer service?

According to Timothy Woodward, TCRSD superintendent, the mailings were sent to roughly 200 residents by Jones and Henry Engineers as part of a feasibility study commissioned by the district “just to get info for the need and want” among residents for sewer service.

Specific costs and other figures were not included, Woodward explained, because it is too soon in the process to know.
The letter stated the district’s connection and availability charge and sewer use rate would be “dependent on the number of people that connect into the system.”

Woodward stressed the area is within the boundaries of the district, created in 1977 under the auspices of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Board of Health. “It is our duty and responsibility to sewer,” he stated. Sewer installation is not dependent on annexation by a municipality.

He added he has so far received a “good response” and through the years the county health department has received many requests for a sewer.

One resident with property in the proposed area, Ann Xander, worried many seasonal residents may not get the mailing, citing her own neighbor who lives in Denver much of the year. “She hadn’t seen anything,” Xander commented. The mailings also did not have a phone number to call, though they request the questionnaire card be returned to “the sewer district by February 23, 2018.”

The district, said Xander, needs to “make the phone calls to make sure people get it.”

For more information, go to the TCRSD website, www.tcrsd.com