Dale Street residents taking sewer fight to Town Meeting

SAUGUS-For more than a decade, residents on Dale Street have been fighting for sewerage and drainage on their street and once again they’ll take that fight to the floor of Town Meeting.Town Meeting member Dennis Moschella asked to Board of Selectmen to place two articles on the agenda for the Annual Town Meeting that essentially ask meeting members to make good on an 11-year old promise, and to explain why that promise was never kept.In 1997, Town Meeting members voted 41-3 to approve $140,000 to install sewerage on five streets. According to a 1998 Sewer Priority List, Dale Street was last on the list, but was the least expensive project at only $5,000. The street was never done, however.In a letter dated Dec. 13, 1999, then-Town Manager Steven Angelo wrote to an attorney hired by the residents that the entire $140,000 was eaten up by the first project on the list, Aberdeen Avenue. He said there was no funding left to do any other projects.Moschella said he discovered later that sewer lines were installed on the other streets in his area except Dale.”To not install sewage on Dale Street is irresponsible and poor judgment on the part of whomever is responsible for the issue,” Moschella wrote in his petition to the board.According to Moschella, the problem is two-part; the homes on Dale Street are on septic systems, not town sewer and there are illegal catch basins on Western and Prospect avenues that are dumping street water onto those properties. The spill over causes flooding and overwhelms the residents’ septic systems.”It is against the law to take water from a public place and dump it onto a private residence,” Moschella wrote. “This is a form of trespassing.”Moschella said he would like to see Dale Street put at the top of this year’s sewerage priority list, “or we will seek legal action.”The second article Moschella submitted asks meeting members to appropriate $65,000 to connect the illegal catch basins to into the new drain system on Clifton Avenue.Moschella said Planning Board engineer Jim Sotiros agreed the situation is unhealthy and should be addressed. Moschella said connecting the catch basins to Clifton Avenue would be the easiest and least expensive fix.Department of Public Works Superintendent Joseph Attubato said the initial fight occurred before his time.”I’m not really sure why it was never done,” Attubato said. “It didn’t fly at the time for whatever reason.”Selectman Stephen Horlick indicated there is no reason the project has gone uncompleted for this long.”Your articles should have been addressed years ago,” he said. “There have been numerous projects put in over the years and yours should have been done. It slipped through the cracks.”Despite the board’s support, Horlick said it would remain to be seen if Town Meeting would allocate the funding to address the problems for a second time.