Milton town council is set to discuss the transfer of 10 acres of land on Sam Lucas Road to the town with the town turning around and deeding 5 acres of land to Tidewater Utilities to construct a new wastewater treatment plant.

The transaction will be possibly voted on at council’s meeting, 6:30 p.m., Monday, Sept. 10, at Milton library. Under terms of the deal, landowner Loblolly LLC, a division of the Draper family’s holdings, will partition 10 acres of farmland on Sam Lucas Road, just south of Cave Neck Road, and then transfer them to the town. Council will then transfer 5 of its 10 acres to Tidewater for a new plant. Council will waive all town partitioning fees as part of the arrangement.

Plans for a new wastewater treatment plant have been in the works for years. Tidewater purchased the plant from the town in 2007, and had plans to build a new plant on the same Front Street site as the current one. But shortly after the purchase, the economy crashed and homebuilding, and the need for additional wastewater capacity, slowed. In 2014, Tidewater submitted two proposals: one that would build a new plant on the site of the old, and a second that would build a new plant on Sam Lucas Road. At that time, however, neither the town nor Tidewater had access to the land.

Tidewater President Gerry Esposito has said construction of the plant would take 12 to 15 months and be operational as early as fall 2020.

Mayor Ted Kanakos said, “All the agreements have been signed. They have to take down the old sewer plant and return that as park land. Sewer plant is a good deal. We’ve been working on it a long time.”

Kanakos said at this time there are no plans for further development of the old wastewater site or the town’s 5 acres on Sam Lucas Road. He said one consideration was possibly putting a new public works building on the Sam Lucas Road land, but town officials are now looking at other sites.

Budget to also be discussed

Besides the wastewater land deal, the council will discuss and possibly vote on the fiscal year 2019 budget and finalize issuing general obligation bonds on the combined $895,000 to build a water main extension between Federal Street and Lavinia Street and building a new well and treatment facility near Shipbuilder’s Village.