East Lyme — After years of planning and deliberating, three Old Lyme beach communities are moving forward on long-held plans to bring a shared sewer system into their neighborhoods after gaining the final permission needed from East Lyme to do so.

The East Lyme Inland Wetland Agency on Monday night unanimously approved, with some stipulations, the three communities to connect a sewer line they are building into the East Lyme sewer system.

The line will run from their neighborhoods abutting Long Island Sound in Old Lyme, along Route 156 and into East Lyme over the Four Mile River, connecting to East Lyme's system in front of The Divine Wine Emporium on Route 156. From there, sewer waste will be sent through existing pipes extending from East Lyme, through Waterford and into New London for treatment.

The three associations, which include Miami Beach Association, Old Lyme Shores Beach Association and Old Colony Beach Association — all of which are chartered beach neighborhoods and are considered separate municipalities from the town — have been planning their own sewer project for years now after the state mandated upgrades to resolve groundwater pollution.

Monday’s approval, however, also represents a necessary step needed for the town of Old Lyme to sewer its Sound View neighborhood, which is nestled between Old Colony Beach and Miami Beach associations. Old Lyme voters recently authorized the town to start bonding for its own project at an August referendum.

The two projects are set to eventually combine, with plans to share the force main and sewer line running down Route 156.

The town of Old Lyme and the associations are presently working out a cost-sharing agreement to pay for the estimated $5 million needed to build the pump station and force main. Plans for the shared pump station on Portland Avenue in the Sound View neighborhood were also recently presented at an Old Lyme Zoning Commission meeting.

Besides determining where removed road and fill would be located while construction is ongoing, the East Lyme Agency easily determined that the project was suitable to move forward at its meeting Monday night. Plans seeking permission for that part of the project were brought forward to the agency in late August by Old Colony Beach Association’s Water Pollution Control Authority Chair Frank Noe, on behalf of the three associations.

The three beach associations were required to gain permission from the East Lyme Agency because construction for the sewer line will take place within 100 feet of the Four Mile River.

The sewer line will not go through the Four Mile River or under it, but will “be built within the pavement of the bridge extending over the river,” according to plans presented to the agency by engineer James Otis of Manchester's Fuss & O’Neill — the engineering firm contracted by the three beach associations to design the project.

As part of its approval, agency members stipulated that the applicant must file a $5,000 erosion and sedimentation bond with the agency before construction starts. That will be returned to the applicant once the agency ensures construction did not cause significant erosion and sedimentation along the Four Mile River area.

The project has gone through a range of variations since Old Lyme town officials started pursuing it in 2014, and at one point included ideas to install an independent sewer system to service beach neighborhoods. That was eventually deemed ineffective and too expensive, paving way to the shared system being planned now. Old Lyme’s neighborhoods have always relied on cesspools and septic tanks to process its sewage.

The three beach associations have already signed inter-municipal agreements with East Lyme and another with New London in 2018 to send and treat sewage through those towns. As part of those agreements, the Old Lyme beach associations will essentially be treated as a customer of the East Lyme system.

East Lyme was under an order from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to reach an agreement with the beach associations, according to previous reporting from The Day. Under the agreement, the Old Lyme beach communities will pay East Lyme for the costs of using its sewer system.

In the application to the East Lyme Agency, Noe outlined that the project may begin as soon as 2020 and extend through 2022. This would include all phases of the project, including building the shared pump station, as well as the force main pipe proposed along Route 156.

“We are just chugging along. We are moving along,” Noe said by phone interview Wednesday.

He said the associations are still in the design phase of the plans and still must line up town easements and receive permitting from various state agencies, including the Department of Transportation, which has jurisdiction over Route 156.

Otis had said in an earlier presentation to the Agency that the sewer line will be made of PVC piping and will be pressure treated before construction to prevent leaks or pipe bursts over the river.

“This follows standard practice,” Otis had said, mentioning that Old Lyme’s Point O’Woods Association completed a similar project in 2008 when it decided, after seven years of planning, to hook into East Lyme’s sewer system by running its own line along Route 156 and the Four Mile River bridge.

m.biekert@theday.com