The city of Milton has run out of time to deliberate over how best to construct a wastewater treatment plant.
Officials face the decision to either move forward quickly to begin construction, at a projected cost of $105 million – of which some $72 million will be borrowed money – or ditch the project and partner with the Pace Water System to send its sewage there.
Partnering with Pace Water System would also be an expensive endeavor and is a course of action yet to be seriously discussed, but it’s an alternative that would not create long-term debt.
City Manager Scott Collins, who took over the job in October, told members of the City Council at a recent meeting that he could not explain how the city had managed to find itself in the precarious place it has landed, but said there is no time left to contemplate when to act on its waste management conundrum.
“This is where we are. It doesn’t matter how we arrived, the simple fact is, here we are now,” he said. “The calendar is not our friend. DEP requirements are not our friend. The process for moving forward is not our friend.”