All towns · bedford

Water and Sewer Advisory Committee Meeting (minutes)

Document

TOWN OF BEDFORD New Hampshire 
 
 
Water and Sewer Advisory Committee 
February 12, 2026, Meeting Minutes – DRAFT 
 
The Water and Sewer Advisory Committee held its regular monthly meeting at BCTV, 10 
Meetinghouse Road, Bedford, NH on Thursday, February 12, 2026. 
 
Attendees: 
Erica Douglas (Environmental Coordinator), Danielle Evansic (Resident), 
Becky Hebert (Planning Director), Mike Sills (Resident). 
 
Absent: 
Richard Moore, Chairperson (Resident), Phil Greazzo (Town Councilor – 
Alternate), Scott Bourcier (Resident), Michael Strand (Town Council Liaison). 
 
 
1. 
Call to Order and Roll Call 
 
The meeting was called to order at 7:51am by acting chairperson Environmental 
Coordinator Erica Douglas.   
 
2. 
Approval of Minutes – November 13, 2025, Meeting 
 
After roll call, Ms. Douglas stated that next we're going to approve the minutes from our 
November 13th meeting. She then said, “Everyone should have a copy of those meeting 
minutes, was there any changes to that?” No one had any corrections or edits, so Ms. 
Herbert moved to approve the minutes and Ms. Evansic seconds that motion. Ms. Douglas 
announces “all in favor say I” to which the group unanimously agrees in favor and the 
motion carries. 
 
3. 
Committee Chair Nominations and Voting 
 
Ms. Douglas stated that then the next item on the agenda is a committee chair. She said, 
“For this right now I've just been filling in, and we've talked in the past, I know with 
Jeremy there was a lot of talk about the Town employees shouldn't be the committee chair 
so what I would like to do is open this up for a nominations for committee chair. There was 
laughter from the committee. Ms. Douglas then asked if there were any nominations. Mr. 
Sills then said, “There’s not going to be any nominations so lets just talk it over.” Ms. 
Evansic then said, “well it’s basically whether Mike wants it or if I do,” asking “is that the 
way it works?” Ms. Douglas responded with “Yes that’s where we are at now, you two 
have been the two that have been showing up to the meetings.” Ms. Evansic then said to 
Mr. Sills, “Mike, I don’t mind unless you want it, I would defer to you because of your 
experience.” Mr. Sills then announced that Ms. Evansic is nominated. Ms. Douglas seconds 
that. Ms. Evansic said she accepts the nomination and Ms. Douglas then asked, “Those in 
favor of electing Danielle Evansic as the new Chair?” All in the committee were in favor. 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
2 of 14
 
 
No one opposed it. Ms. Douglas stated then that the motion carries. She then asked Ms. 
Evansic if she would like to take over officially, to which Ms. Evansic accepted. 
 
4. 
Status Update on BOD and TSS Issues 
 
Ms. Evansic states that the next item on the agenda is the status update on BOD and 
TSS issues. Ms. Douglas stated that she was happy to provide an update on that. She 
said, “So we were having some really high BOD and TSS ratings over in Manchester, as I 
let you all know some of the history from the last time the last meeting we had gone 
through cleaning out the siphon, we've done multitudes of testing on our side, on the 
Manchester side, and then we hired consultant Rick Cantu of Osprey Owl, who did a 
fantastic job. He was the old superintendent of the wastewater treatment plant in 
Manchester and is very familiar with our system and the issues that we've had in the past 
with testing for BOD and TSS. So with that he also coordinated testing our samples at the 
Manchester lab, Manchester sampling that they did at a private lab, and the results came 
back in that report that I sent out, pretty much as we expected the board, the private lab was 
slightly lower but not much and what we ended up determining was our flows have 
increased to the point where during the day we have high flows of high diurnal flows 
enough that's overflowing our 10-in siphon into our 14-in siphon at that point the 14 inch 
siphon would carry the flow, the minimal amount of flow that was receiving, over to 
Manchester and then when the flow dropped back down what was happening was the 
siphon was slowing down and stopping and all of the BOD and TSS was settling out. Then 
in the morning as the flow would pick up and increase again, we get a slug of BOD and 
TSS.” Mr. Sills asked Ms. Douglas, “so its settling into the 14 inch?” She replied, “Yes. So 
what we ended up doing is we closed that 10 inch and so the 14 is now able to handle the 
low flows no problem and it's able to handle the increase of the other flows coming through 
at the high points and we’ve seen a drop back down to normal in our BOD and TSS so our 
bills have started coming back down to the normal range so we're pretty confident that we 
have a temporary solution until we do the siphon station upgrade and at that point will be 
able to tweak some stuff. Mr. Sills then asked, “So do you think that the high BODs and 
TSS was due to settlement in the 14?” To which Ms. Douglas replied that that was correct. 
Ms. Evansic then confirmed that that was what was discussed at the last meeting, that the 
high BOD and TSS were due to the settlement in 14inch. Ms. Douglas agreed, stating that 
we now had billing data to corroborate that. She said some of the things we will continue to 
investigate as Manchester moves forward with their CSO separation projects, our billing is 
also based in proportion to what their BOD and TSS and what their flow is. So, this 
summer when they weren't getting high spikes in flow, that was also cause for our sewer 
bills to be high, so when we move forward with the sewer financial model update, that will 
all be accounted for in that. Mr. Sills then asked, “If the BOD and TSS solids, even though 
its settled, were still strong or at least average, probably means we don’t have a lot of I&I 
in the system.” Ms Douglas stated that that’s absolutely correct. Mr. Sills then asked, 
“when was the last time we Tved it?”  Ms. Douglas then asked if Mr. Sills was referring to 
the siphon or the pipes. Mr. Sills responded with “the pipes, all of them.”  Ms. Douglas 
then said, “we did a full assessment that was completed in 2017 and then this past year in 
2025 we did start TVing pipes again, but one of the things that I did this year was I added a 
level sensor to the manhole that’s right out front of the siphon station so we can see what 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
3 of 14
 
 
that’s doing. Unfortunately, that’s not that great for flow because where two lines come 
into it and so it gets very sluggish. So, we are just using it as a level sensor right now. 
That’s giving us great data, and we are able to see what the level in that manhole is doing 
during storm events. So right now, we haven’t seen any real high I&I in the system. We are 
moving forward with our flow metering study and so that as the spring moves forward and 
we get the snow melt and rain that will really give us some good information and data on 
what we want to do moving forward, if there’s any I&I to be addressed. Mr. Sills then said, 
“So this is good news, bad news?”  Ms. Douglas then said, “The way we are going to do 
the flow metering is, we will really be able to break down the areas and the neighborhoods 
and the interceptor line that flows along the river, that’s the oldest section, so generally the 
interceptors are going to be the best built pipes in your systems but they are also going to 
be the oldest, we do have some clay in that section, so we can expect there will probably be 
majority I&I. As you get over to the street laterals that were generally not built by the city 
that were undertaken by the city, that’s where you start seeing more of the defects in the 
pipes, they aren’t generally as well built as the interceptors. It’s a toss up on where they 
could be coming from, but we do have some good indication that those interceptors might 
have a little bit of I&I that will need to be addressed. It might be as simple as a lining 
project and not a full reconstruction. I will have more data once the flow metering study is 
done and at that point, we’ll also be able to help model the system to really see what our 
lines are doing. At that point we’ll come back to you because we’ll have more information 
on our wet weather data and how we want to actually model our pipes.” Mr. Sills then 
added, “its not going drastically down during a storm event which is good.” Ms. Douglas 
agreed, and Ms. Evansic then said, “That’s what we saw with the drought data from last 
summer was that even though Manchester saw significant decrease, we didn’t.” Ms. 
Douglas agrees, and Ms. Evansic then continued, “Like you said its good news, bad news, 
Manchester was wasteful, we’re pretty efficient so as they get better sewer costs are going 
to increase.” Ms. Douglas then replied, “With that also being said we were seeing issues 
with our Alpine Court one which is our next item, so I’ll wait to get to that.” Ms. Evansic 
then said we will roll into that one stating that Alpine Court has a high flow issue, and that 
is the next item on our agenda if we are happy with the BOD and TSS discussion. 
 
5. 
Status Update on Alpine Court High Flow Issue 
 
Ms. Douglas began, “That was something else we had brought up at the last meeting, we 
were seeing high flows in that area that were not at all related to rain events. It was very 
strange because it was obviously a residential neighborhood. We were seeing low flows in 
the springtime when we would expect to see high flows and then this summer we again 
we're seeing high flows in the Manchester side as we were reading it so we actually put 
another flow meter just upstream of their metering station and that was giving us really 
great consistent data not showing any I&I in our whole Alpine Court flow area. But it 
wasn’t actually solving the problem of why we were getting those high reading. So, this 
December we ended up having some really high weird readings in that flow meter when it 
had been very consistent,” Mr. Sills then asked, “was this during storm events?” To which 
Ms. Douglas responded with, “No. So we went out there and the manhole was actually 
surcharging because of blockages do to grease in that system. So looking back in the 
history it looks like grease has been a very common issue in the system, so what we ended 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
4 of 14
 
 
up doing is flow assessment was fantastic, that's the contract that we were working with for 
the flow metering data, they came out they opened up the manhole and got their meter set 
back up again and then we coordinated with Manchester to let them know that there was a 
grease issue as well. We set up a time for all of us to meet out on site to see if we can move 
our meter into their station, unfortunately there wasn't enough room, Flow Assessment was 
able to go in and say we agree Manchester has their meter in the best location; it appears 
their meter is reading correctly. They were able to confirm all of that they were also able to 
confirm that there was a huge piece of grease in the system that hadn’t been cleaned out 
and when they did clean it out both Manchester and Bedford visually observed the flow the 
level on their meter reading 4 inches dropping down to under an inch immediately. So that 
corroborates what we were thinking we were seeing in our flow meter around 3 to 500, 000 
gallons, for the month long period, they were billing us for 2 million so what we've done 
the last month of January is we were going out almost daily minus the weekends and doing 
stagnant readings because they're their metering station is just a totalizer and our meter that 
we have in there captures flow every 5 minutes, so we're looking at lining those up and 
corroborating that Manchester has all that information so they've already verbally said that 
if we can show a difference in what their meter was totalizing versus what was actually 
happening then we'll be able to hopefully go back to them for a credit.” Ms. Evansic then 
said, “So just to summarize that, we tie into the Manchester system, they've got a meter on 
where that tie in happens and we have a meter as well because we were seeing high flow 
rates and high charges,” Ms. Douglas agreed and Ms. Evansic continued, “and when there 
was a discrepancy and everything looked horrible you guys went out and looked and it 
turned out that the blockage was in Manchester's line but it was backing things up to their 
meter and making them believe it was coming from Alpine Court.” Ms. Douglas responded 
by saying, “yeah it was actually in the metering manhole where they have the flow meter.” 
Mr. Sills asked, “is that on the Manchester side of the river?” To which Ms. Douglas stated, 
“No this is the Alpine, so there’s a section in the northeastern corner of the Town that flows 
into the Manchester system. Actually, if you look up on the map I handed out, it’s also on 
your screens, you’ll see at the top right, you can see there’s some green pipes that connect 
into the Manchester side.” She continued, “So that connects to their metering station that’s 
at the end of Alpine Court in Manchester.” Mr. Sills then said, “Then we have to ask, 
where is the grease coming from?” Ms. Douglas stated, “There is some history from the 
condominiums over there, so what we did is we did create a residential grease brochure and 
we’ve been mailing it out to everybody and let them know that we’ve been seeing issues in 
the system from grease, very specifically to their neighborhood, a letter was sent with the 
brochure attached. That was done about a month ago.” Mr. Sills then added that there are 
specific requirements for grease traps for major contributors, to which Ms. Douglas 
responded by saying, “Yeah, unfortunately there’s no requirements for residential.” Mr. 
Sills questioned why so much grease was getting into the system to which Ms. Evansic 
then asked, “is it just that that manhole doesn’t get cleaned very often?” To which Ms. 
Douglas responded, “So we do pay for Manchester to clean that. That is on our sewer bill, 
however talking with the Environmental Protection Division, which is a different division 
than the Public Works in Manchester that actually cleans it, it doesn’t sound like they have 
great access to that manhole with their trucks and so they just clean the line going up to that 
and not that actual manhole. So that’s something that we have to make sure we stay on top 
of in the future. Flow Assessment jumped in there with the scrubber brush and actually just 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
5 of 14
 
 
scrubbed the channel and that immediately made such a huge difference in it. So that’s 
something that we are going to make sure we are doing at lease quarterly.” Mr. Sills then 
asked, “To see if it comes back?” to which Ms. Douglas responded by saying exactly. Mr. 
Sills then said, “it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but if there is a meat packing plant or 
restaurants.” Ms. Douglas responded by saying that it’s all residential. Ms. Evansic then 
said, “so you were saying if you can demonstrate that situation doesn’t reoccur that there’s 
some sort of recompense with Manchester?” to which Ms. Douglas responded that that’s 
correct, affirming for Ms. Evansic that that is ongoing currently. Ms. Evansic then asked if 
anyone else had anything to say regarding this issue, no one did, Ms. Evansic then moved 
to the next item on the agenda. 
 
 
6.  
Status Update on Flow Metering 2026 
 
Ms. Douglas begin by saying “We are moving forward with the flow metering study for 
2026, we have all of our flow meter locations selected, we ran it by a consultant, and 
they were able to confirm the locations and suggest a few tweaks, and so we are going 
to be moving forward with that as soon as possible. We want to get it in before the 
weather starts really changing so we have a good baseline flow.” 
Mr. Sills commented, “so far the weather changing, i.e. rain, hasn’t dug a lot of ii up.” 
Ms. Douglas replied, “Right, the ground has been very frozen so hopefully it’ll be a nice 
wet spring for us to have a good baseline in there but as we move forward with this, 
we’ll really be able to see what’s going on.” Mr. Sills then chimed in, “here’s a fun fact, 
back then, the state required a coating on the inside of our CP pipe preventing it 
against detergent degradation and things like that, and it’s still working I guess.” 
Ms. Douglas then asked, “is that on the interceptors?” to which Mr. Sills said yes. Ms. 
Douglas then continued, “so in the last Tving in 2017 on that it did look like some of 
that was peeling off, so that will be the first thing that we TV this year on our Tving 
program will be the interceptors just to get an update on what that’s looking like 
because it’s been 9 years since that was Tved last.” Mr. Sills responded by saying 
“You’re way ahead of us old people like me, have you guys figured out whether you 
would recoat it or just let it degrade?” Ms. Douglas then said, “at this point what we 
would do is go in and first thoroughly clean out the pipes, get as much off as possible, 
and then it will probably be the cheapest solution to just line it. It will provide some 
more structure. Once we get the assessment on that, and we have information on 
infiltration it will help us prioritize where the projects should be.” Ms. Evansic then 
moved us to our next agenda item. 
 
7.  
Notice of Sleeve Under Route 101 to be Converted to Water Sleeve Conceptually 
 
Once Ms. Evansic read the agenda item aloud Mr. Sills asked, “is that the one by the 
Copper Door? One went under 101 over there.” Ms. Douglas responded, “No, it’s down 
by Wallace Road.” Ms. Evansic then asked, “Didn’t you guys just do something over 
there?” Ms. Douglas replied stating, “There is a private project that’s happening over 
there. So, this is a sewer sleeve that we put in years ago, there’s been some talk about 
what’s going to end up happening with this sleeve. Is the Sewer Department actually 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
6 of 14
 
 
going to use it, are we going to expand out here? Or is this going to be used as a water 
sleeve instead? I know there’s some developments that have been looking into that, so 
I don’t know the full history of it but that has come up and that Water/Sewer Advisory 
Committee should obviously have some say and maybe this actually ties in to the next 
item as we get into our future water and sewer availability but with potential 
developments looking at using the sleeve for water, we should have an understanding 
of what we want to do with the sewer and water in the Town first so we can make a 
recommendation to Council.” Mr. Sills then chimed in, “here’s a fun fact number two, 
back in the day, when 101 was being upgraded, consultants that the Town hires 
would automatically put a sleeve under the road while they are building it back up so 
you didn’t disturb it, and if you never used it, you never used it, so that’s why its there. 
And it wasn’t a big cost if you didn’t end up using it. We did a thing out there with 
sewage out there for the shopping center when it was IGA, but it was horrendously 
expensive, was there someone considering?” Ms. Hebert responded by saying, “I think 
the Town studied extension of sewer from the Village shops to the intersection of 101 
and Wallace Road.” Mike Trainque added via phone call, “We actually did a complete 
design,” Ms. Hebert agreed and then continued, “I believe it was  not something that 
we land owners wanted and the Town Councilor at the time wanted to invest in 
because it was very expensive and there would be a fee that would be applied to the 
land owners along the corridor and they had functioning onsite septic systems and 
there didn’t seem to be enough of the return on investment at the time. But a private 
line has been extended from the school to serve the apartments on Chestnut Drive.” 
Mr. Sills then said, “Mike probably knows this, the Village Shops side, they rebuilt their 
system with galleries under the parking lot, I think, when they redid the Village septic 
system.” Ms. Hebert responded saying, “I think they have a tie in to the sewer system 
at the Village Shops.” Ms. Evansic then asked what we are looking at on the screens, 
she asked, “are those the existing sewer lines?” To which Ms. Douglas responded, “Yes, 
those are the existing sewer lines or sewer sleeve at the bottom left right there at 
Wallace Road. There are no private lines here, this is only showing what the Town 
owns.” Ms. Douglas acknowledged that there is a comment from the public. “Brian 
Desfosses, DPW Director, I just wanted to further inform the committee regarding this 
request. It’s not an active request at this time, but it is something that has been 
discussed for the past two years. A private developer is looking to potentially use this 
sleeve. So, there is a sleeve that goes across 101, it was installed at the time 101 was 
reconstructed. And then there was a line that also goes across Wallace Road on the 
south side of that intersection as you’re looking at it. The current waterline that is 
owned by Pennichuck currently dead ends on the east side of Wallace Road right near 
the slip ramp that goes into what was Harvest Market and is now the Wicked Good 
Butcher. The intent is to potentially take that line and run it south across 101 and over 
into Wallace Road for future development. Conceptually Public Works has worked 
with developer and the landowner indicating that we would be amendable to it but it 
should be correctly in front of the committee and then eventually if it were to happen 
would need to get by in from Town Council because it’s a Town asset so we simply 
wanted the committee to be aware and perhaps think about this relative to our sewer 
master plan update because if we were to commit this to water usage, obviously it 
would never be available again to be used for sewer. We just want to make sure we 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
7 of 14
 
 
are making the right decision for the Town and that the committee and the Town 
Council are well informed. I can answer any questions you might have.” Mr. Sills then 
asked, “What’s the diameter of our sleeve?” Mr. Desfosses responded, “That’s a great 
question,” Then Ms. Hebert asked, “do you know if the folks on Wallace Road…” Ms. 
Douglas said, “It looks like its 8inch.” Mr. Sills then asked, “You think its 8?” Mr. 
Desfosses responded, “I don’t think that’s right, I think its actually bigger than that. I 
remember we updated the GIS right afterwards because I couldn’t remember what 
the number was.” Our GIS Coordinator controlling the screens checked his data and 
confirmed that it is a 12 inch sleeve. Mr. Desfosses then said, “the pipe across 101 is a 
sleeve, and so it’s a little bit bigger. The pipe across Wallace Road is not a sleeve, it’s 
an actual pipe and there is a manhole over in the corner. Continental Paving had 
installed this at the time when they were working on Route 101, so we actually dug 
back to their records. It is going to be a one shot deal, the end result of this, its not 
going to be able to have sewer and water cohabitate within the sleeve.” Ms. Evansic 
then asked, “Where is the end goal of that going?” Mr. Desfosses replied by saying, “ So 
the conversations have occurred relative to the parcel that would be on the south east 
corner, as the property further to the south east is developed, that’s the Dumas 
property, there is a potential provision to obtain sewer from that property and water 
using this sleeve that would allow something to be built on that south east corner that 
would have access to water and sewer. Perhaps Director Hebert could further that, I 
know she’s been in contact with those landowners.” 
Mr. Sills then said, “here’s a sidebar, again a bunch of us old people that work for the 
agency recently we went to the Manchester Water and Sewer Committee meetings, 
the State of New Hampshire is like 60% plus groundwater source, that’s very bad. No 
other state is like that. No one wanted to jump the gun, Massabesic could probably 
handle it, but Manchester didn’t want to get involved. In other words, any place we 
could put in formal water and get people off their wells is going to be good for the 
Town and the State. Right now, it’s not a tremendous thing but if you continue to rely 
on groundwater for drinking, is suicide. So, I vote water.” Ms. Hebert then asked, “Do 
we know if the PFAST readings on the property on Wallace Road are high or if there 
are any issues in that area?” Mr. Desfosses responded saying, “I don’t know that.” 
Ms. Evansic then asked, “How would that impact the neighboring properties, I know I 
keep asking this because I keep forgetting, are they required to tap in once it goes by 
and how much does that impact the ones that would be along that water corridor?” 
Mr. Desfosses responded saying, “This would eventually be owned by Pennichuck, it 
can’t be privately owned, DOT would not allow a private utility to exist, but 
unfortunately Pennichuck has this rule where they can’t extend water themselves. 
And so, this would have to be privately constructed and then turned over to 
Pennichuck. I am not sure what the rules would be relative to forcing owners to 
connect if you will.” Ms. Hebert then said, “There is not a mandatory tie in, and many 
people will elect to tie in because of the water quality concerns. I think you also have 
the Walgreens and the shops at the French Atwood marketplace that might benefit 
from having a water source.” Mr. Sills responded saying, “Final note, I can’t imagine it 
but if wastewater was needed in that area, you can still go under 101 if you built a 
tunnel under the Everett, you could still do that if you had to get under 101. It’s too 
bad about DOT, but you can’t open cut, you could never allow that.” Mr. Desfosses 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
8 of 14
 
 
then said, “ I believe that the line that was installed across 101 was much smaller than 
originally desired because of the presence of ledge and so I think if you did that you 
would probably end up having to core through rock to install that line. I should also 
note that it would be a requirement of this developer were they to take over and use 
this sleeve, they would have to reimburse us, the Town, for any and all costs that were 
associated with installing both those lines, and so we know what those costs are and 
they would have to reimburse the Town for that, that would go back into the sewer 
fund.” Ms. Evansic then said, “This is a planning commission issue more but is that 
intersection going to be affected where that construction of anything to that 
intersection affected that sleeve anyway, if they go and put something amazing in that 
parcel?” Ms. Hebert responded by asking, “Potentially, would there need to be changes 
to the intersection? Ms. Evansic replied “yea” to which Ms. Hebert continued, 
“Potentially, depending on the traffic volumes.” Ms. Evansic then asked, “and would 
they go deep enough to be impacting that sleeve anyway?” Ms. Hebert said, “I don’t 
think they would be changing 101 I think they’d be changing the Wallace Road 
approach.” Ms. Evansic nodded in agreement and said “okay.” 
Ms. Evansic then asked, “So what are you looking for from us on this item?” 
Ms. Douglas responded by saying, “We want you to be aware of it, and then as part of 
item #8 on here, as we start going through this we’re going to ask that there’s some 
type of recommendation be made to Council for expansion of water and sewer, as we 
moved forward with the sewer master plan and so this will obviously will be a huge 
part of that so we wanted to bring it to the forefront before we got into the rest of that 
discussion.” Ms. Evansic replied by asking, “Okay is there anything more that you 
wanted to say about this before we roll into item #8?” Ms. Douglas responded by 
saying, “I don’t have anything, I think it can be incorporated as other recommendation 
to the Council as part of #8.” Mr. Desfosses then said, “I’m not sure a recommendation 
is really warranted at this time. I think we just wanted to sort of inform the 
committee. I haven’t had any discussions with this developer for probably a year now. 
What I didn’t want to happen is have the committee be unaware of it and then all of a 
sudden, we need an answer very quickly, I wanted this to be background information 
as we go through the rest of the work the committee needs to do.” Ms. Evansic 
responded by saying, “I think that’s great, I appreciate it being brought up.” Ms. 
Hebert then asked, “From an engineering standpoint, if this sleeve is used for water, it 
will be very difficult to extend the sewer system towards the west, correct?” Mr. 
Desfosses said, “correct, thank you.” Ms. Evansic then asked, “okay so how do we 
move on to #8? Do we have a presentation?” 
 
8.  
Water and Sewer GIS map presentation and high discussion on future water and 
sewer availability  
 
Ms. Douglas began by saying, “We have Brandon Boisvert our GIS Coordinator here and 
at one of the previous meetings it was mentioned that he had done a presentation a couple 
of years ago and it was well received and so he’s going to start out our topic of water sewer 
master plan by going over where he’s at with our water and sewer GIS.” Ms. Evansic then 
said, “I just want to say I am a big GIS fan so have fun presenting because I love it.”  Mr. 
Boisvert responded by saying, “Glad to hear it. My name is Brandon Boisvert, I am the GIS 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
9 of 14
 
 
Coordinator, Engineering Technician for the Department of Public Works. Since I was last 
here, we’ve worked with John Jackman on developing our wastewater/asset management 
plan and a big part of that was just going through and verifying the age of our pipes, the 
diameter, and other attributes that’s going to be useful for life cycle cost estimates and 
helping Erica with her capacity understanding. There’s not too much to add to the mapping 
other than that we’ve discovered there’s big deficiencies in private lines and service lines 
and that those are going to be priority for us going forward. Beyond that, working on tie 
cards as well and making things a little more accessible in the field but overall, this isn’t 
the best place it’s ever been on this map. I know the real intention today was to show where 
sewer could potentially expand in to. Some of the interesting things we have shown here is 
the sewer pipe by age, which I thought is kind of a nice way to view things. So, you have 
on the left our legend, which basically says yellow is the oldest and red is the newest, 
orange would be in between. So, you can kind of see the development of the sewer line 
over time. It’s funny that we are always talking about the sewer system as being very 
young and it’s starting to approach the 50 year mark. It’s definitely good that Erica is here 
to do some proactive asset management.” Ms. Evansic then asked, “Can I derail you for a 
second? I know we haven’t done the flow metering yet but when I look at the reds and the 
yellows and all that, I’m wondering do you know which lines are insufficient or of a 
diameter that’s not large enough for the flows that you currently see?” Ms. Douglas 
responded by saying, “We don’t right now, that’s one of the big things that we’ll be doing 
ats part of the master plan update, so that when developments do come online we are 
tracking that, knowing what our capacity of the line is and then we are creating criteria for 
a threshold where those lines will need to be upgraded. That’ll be very important moving 
forward and that will all be part of our master plan.” Looking at the map, Mr. Sills then 
asked, “Is that yellow line next to the Everett, the furthest line, is that the town interceptor, 
is that in their easement that we put in or is that on property?” Mr. Boisvert asked, “Which 
one exactly?” Mr. Sills then said, “Theres an interceptor from whatever the pub is called 
now, instead of running it in the back alleys of the mall we’re able to get it into the 
easement of the highway, so that sewer is built into the easement, the Everett turnpike, then 
it crosses over at the road where Walmart used to be. So, I’m not sure what that yellow is.” 
Ms. Hebert then asked, “Do you mean the yellow underneath the 101 bridge?” 
Mr. Sills said, “No the furthest yellow, the one that goes along…” Mr. Boisvert zoomed in 
on the map and circled a yellow line with his cursor asking Mr. Sills, “Right here?” to 
which Mr. Sills said, “yes.” Mr. Boisvert responded by saying, “I think this might served 
the church property.” Ms. Douglas confirmed that that’s correct. She said, “We have it as 
the lateral for the church.” Mr. Boisvert added, “We have it as an 8 inch, PVC, gravity, it’s 
considered private.” Mr. Sills asked, “Is it the Presbyterian church?” Mr. Boisvert 
responded, “No there’s a church here off of Hawthorne Drive, you take Station Road and 
its just on the left.” Mr. Boisvert pulled up the parcel information and confirmed, “Trinity 
Life Community, 12 Station Road, so that’s what that services there.” Ms. Evansic then 
said, “Take you on a quick side quest, if you zoom in on the three pipes going under the 
river, those are the pipes that we were talking about earlier, just pointing it out for the 
people at home.” Mr. Boisvert then said, “Unless you have any questions on this, I think I 
can start showing you just where we have water, where we have sewer and where there’s 
potential opportunities.” Ms. Evansic responded by saying, “Sure go for it.” Mr. Boisvert 
continued, “So I am just going to use these polygons, I think that’s more beneficial. 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
10 of 14
 
 
Basically, everywhere there’s these green thick lines are where we have existing sewer. 
You can see there’s a lot of opportunity where there’s waterlines without sewer. Erica, I 
don’t know if there’s anywhere you want me to look in particular.” Ms. Douglas 
responded, “So for right now when we had done the original sewer master plan there was 
several areas that were identified as possible expansion opportunities. There was what we 
were just talking about before, the Route 101/Nashua Road area as an expansion, there was 
the area just up by Alpine Court, expanding that up to some of those side streets there, the 
Pines area, and then the Sebbins Pond area, which I know you guys have discussed before. 
So those were the areas that were identified during that original sewer master plan. As we 
moved forward, we wanted to make a recommendation to Council whether we wanted to 
look at those same area, if anything else should be included, and also to note the Greenfield 
development is not part of this discussion, down in the southern part of the Town, that 
actually flows to Merrimack. That is at capacity right now, and as part of our sewer master 
plan we are not proposing any additions or expansions or anything to that system that might 
be a future project area upgrade or reconstruction but as part of this discussion that this 
would not be part of that so we just want to focus on what was hit in the original master 
plan and what flows to Manchester.” Mr. Sills added, “That’s locked in, there’s no real 
good way to get sewage from there to a connection to our system anyway, so you got to go 
to Merrimack. Ms. Douglas stated that’s correct. Ms. Evansic then asked if you should ask 
a clarifying question, “The Alpine Street when that ties in, does that flow down to the same 
siphon system or does it connect to Manchester and not run through the siphons?” Ms. 
Douglas responded, “That’s correct, the second one, so it does not connect to our siphon 
station, it flows into Manchester’s system, at that point, which is why it is a separate 
metering station.” Ms. Evansic then asked, “So would the Pines area be expected to 
connect through Alpine or connect down into…” Ms. Douglas stated, “So there are two 
areas that were looked at for that. One of that would be connecting into the pump station 
down on Constitution. There was also a gravity system that they were looking at down onto 
Boynton Street. So, there’s a couple of different options that we could get flow down into 
our existing system from there.” Mr. Sills asked, “That line that you have the arrow on, is 
the forced main from Market Basket?” Ms. Douglas responded, “Yes, and that connects 
into the existing Constitution system, so it could easily connect into the existing pump 
station there or it also could be serviced by gravity which is also a nice option.” 
Ms. Evansic then said, “I’ll stop interrupting if you got more, if you have an agenda, go for 
it.” Mr. Boisvert stated, “My agenda is to help you work through, you know exploratory of 
the potential options that you have, so if you want to look at certain areas…” Ms. Douglas 
then said, “So as part of this discussion we had sent out a memo, and I’ll just kind of run 
through some of that. We wanted to just make sure that we were really hitting on certain 
criteria that we were looking for in there because there are certain constraints to our 
system. Our system does have to look at our IMA with Manchester and so any major 
upgrades would have to be designed and coordinated with Manchester based off our BOD 
and TSS and flow requirements. We do have to still have some capacity there so all of this 
is an option. As we move forward with our flow metering, we’ll learn more about our 
system as part of that, what our wet weather response is, what our inflow and infiltration 
reduction needs to be, and then we’ll coordinate with Manchester Waterworks and 
Pennichuck for any of the water expansions in there. Some other issues we want to think 
about are the public health and environmental protection, so including septic systems that 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
11 of 14
 
 
might be failing, contamination to the water quality in areas, so that primarily would be the 
Sebbins Pond area. So those are some considerations we need to think about as we make 
these recommendations. There is, I’ll kind of jump back to Brandon because you do have 
more information on where we are going with Sebbins Pond and some funding available.” 
Mr. Boisvert replied, “We are currently working with VHB and DES on a watershed 
management plan for Sebbins Pond and Sandy Pond. We’re jumping the gun but we’re just 
assuming that based on the TMDL for Sebbins Pond, we are assuming the primary 
recommendation is going to be putting sewer in this area because we believe the septic’s 
are likely the main contributor of phosphorus to the pond. There may be funding, I know in 
the past we had talked with DES about doing a sewer project and we didn’t move forward 
with it, I think it was $18 million or something like that. We thought it was a lot more 
responsible to do this watershed management plan first, and that’s all funded by the state as 
well using there SRF program.” Ms. Evansic then added, “As I recall, last year we 
recommended more testing, right? Because the data was so old?” Mr. Boisvert responded 
by saying, “Yes, so that’s going to be a part of this they’re going to be water quality 
assessments then VHB is going to work on developing recommendations based on that. 
And just an overall watershed management plan, I assume, well I hope that we’re not going 
to be left with just a recommendation of put in a sewer, there should be a little more to that. 
That is more focus on the water quality standpoint. But like I said sewer would help 
alleviate some of the phosphorus inputs, but we don’t want to get ahead of the study itself.” 
Ms. Evansic responded, “Well, I can tell you straight off that my biggest concern is that we 
aren’t overflowing the siphon, that we are not exceeding its design and incurring a billion 
dollar replace your siphon kind of a thing, so would what we are looking at with Sebbins 
Pond be going through that system under the river? And how would that impact the 
capacity of that system?” Ms. Douglas replied, “So all of that would be modeled, but my 
understanding of Sebbins Pond is that would be on a pump station so there wouldn’t be as 
much of a direct impact to the system because of that, but all of that will be able to be 
modeled moving forward in the future once we have that.” Mr. Sill then said, “One of the 
other alternatives would be a central community septic system, that is in a perfect spot and 
is monitored rather than built sewer up. Individual homes might have problems, maybe, but 
there is also a central septic system alternative.” Ms. Hebert responded, “They might not 
have enough land area to do that.” Mr. Boisvert said, “That’s good to know, we certainly 
don’t have any predetermined outcome on our side, we want to be open to all options.” 
Ms. Douglas continued, “To jump back in there, some other factors we want to think about 
as we look at these areas again with new eyes, obviously, constructability, topography, 
utility conflicts, land use goals, zoning, and economic development objectives. And then 
one of the biggest factors, trying to coordinate any type of water/sewer expansion, if any of 
those are proposed, with planned roadway projects, that way the water and sewer 
installations wouldn’t have to be double paying for pavement or other expenses like that 
that can all be coordinated and planned together as one project. So those were just some of 
the items we wanted to keep in mind as we talked about this. What we can do is go through 
each individual area that was in the original sewer master plan, we have the Pines area, that 
was primarily residential subsurface disposal on small lots, generally deep rapidly 
percolating sands in that area. There is water there, just no sewer system. I wanted to kind 
of open that up for thoughts.” Ms. Evansic then stated, “So I’m still as the, the primary 
thing is that siphon, I can’t get past that, right? So when I look at the plans and I know 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
12 of 14
 
 
when we talked about Sebbins Pond before, we were concerned about the cost to the 
homeowners in that area and the cost to Bedford residents as a whole for doing that 
remediation but it still seems as though if Sebbins Pond is the most concerning, 
environmentally that should be the priority of focus for the master plan. Does that make 
sense Mike, where I am going with that?” Mr. Sills replied, “We’ll see how the numbers 
come out. Developments by lakes and ponds is very tricky, particularly when they look at 
septic systems.” Ms. Evansic then added, “The houses there at Sebbins Pond are so densely 
packed, you know, are all right there together.” Mr. Sills continued, “It gets into the 
technical part of phosphorus from the septic system under the leaching field, somehow 
getting to a water body versus failure, running it on top of the land. So that’s the kind of 
thing we have to look at. It’s a very technical issue to see in detail. But yeah, we should be 
looking at that first.” Ms. Hebert then said, “Not looking at priorities but instead looking at 
where future sewer should be in town, I think it makes sense to keep the Sebbins Pond area 
within the sewer master plan. It’s where we have higher density of residential homes, we 
have water, it’s an area that may benefit from sewer extension. I would keep it in the sewer 
district, and the sewer master plan sets the boundary of the sewer district so that is where 
the Town decides it would like to see future sewer extensions. You know, regardless of 
priority, if a developer wants to extend sewer outside of the sewer district, it requires 
special approval from the Town Council. I think it’s important to think big picture with this 
and I understand there will be priorities from the committee within the sewer district, but 
we should also be thinking about where it may make sense for future development because 
it’s more of a hurdle for the development community if land is not in the sewer district. It’s 
also a statement to the development community; we don’t want to see higher density 
development at this point. Ms. Douglas continued, “Great, thank you, so then next one is 
that north Boynton Street east of Route 114. There’s planned growth support where it’s 
feasible, and its consistent with zoning, so is there any discussion to be had in that area as 
well?” Ms. Hebert replied saying, “Maybe it’s not the priority but it makes sense to keep in 
within the sewer district.” Ms. Evansic stated she agrees with that. Ms. Douglas continued, 
“We’ve already talked a little about Sebbins Pond, we have started that watershed 
management plan that Brandon spoke about, and then Route 101/ the Nashua Road to 
Covenant Way, it’s a commercial corridor support and planned growth.” Ms. Evansic 
asked, “Where does that end that Covenant Way?” Ms. Hebert replied, “The Bethany 
Covenant Church, Covenant Way is a class 6 road, so it’s an unimproved road that would 
connect to County Road at the intersection with Wallace.” Ms. Evansic then asked, “So 
they already have water?” Ms. Hebert said, “No, it extends to Covenant Way, Route 101 
goes uphill towards the church, though I believe from a feasibility standpoint the system 
could extend to Covenant Way then flow down to a pump station at the intersection with 
Wallace Road.” Ms. Evansic then asked, “And then it would tie into the line at the high 
school?” Ms. Hebert said, “Yes at Nashua.” Ms. Evansic then asked Mr. Sills where he was 
at with this, to which he responded, “There was a change over, my PHD advisor was a 
Canadian Engineer that redesigned septic rules, how fast things get into the ground under 
the leaching field and so all the states changed their codes, a lot of that, the area where 
Walmart used to be and the rest of the town is on a modern septic system design, plus it’s a 
big lot, so I’m not feeling a lot of stress there. Now there are various super systems that can 
be put in, but I don’t see a lot of risk out there.” Ms. Evansic then asked, “How does that 
match with zoning, is that whole thing a development corridor? Is that why its highlighted 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
13 of 14
 
 
for sewer?” Ms. Hebert responded, “It’s a commercial zone along 101, it’s an area that the 
Town, through its master planning has designated a locally survey and commercial 
corridor, so it’s intended to have smaller commercial uses to serve Bedford residences as 
opposed to regional commercial area like South River Road where you have more 
businesses and more of a regional draw. I think that through the master plan the folks of 
Bedford express concern about higher density development along 101 and wanted to see 
the least amount of change along the 101 corridor heading west from Wallace Road, so I 
would say maybe this section could come out of the sewer district or something to be 
studied to be removed from the sewer district.” Ms. Evansic responded, “I think that’s 
appropriate, because I agree, when you look at that stretch, people are already concerned 
about traffic and stopping to access those, I know density, there is a concern. In my opinion 
that would be the least priority of expansion of the system. And then I know I read in this 
that you were suggesting additions to the…” Ms. Douglas responded, “Yes, if there were 
any areas that we wanted to add to this, we could potentially talk about that. I didn’t have 
any proposed, but I wanted to leave that as an option as well, if there was something we 
wanted to look into and study in the future.” Ms. Evansic then asked, “Other than the one 
that you already presented about that sleeve, that would be privately developed, is there 
anything that has been brought by the community that we should be looking to add to the 
master plan?” Mr. Desfosses responded, “I would say, only that development that we 
discussed, in which case, that sewer would actually be privately owned it wouldn’t be part 
of the Town’s system because it would effectively piggyback on other private systems that 
already send sewage to the high school.” Ms. Hebert commented, “So that large parcel to 
the southeast of the 101 and Wallace Road intersection would benefit from having both 
sewer and water.” Mr. Desfosses interjected, “If I could just correct myself, I did find the 
information on that sleeve and that line that Mike had asked about. I was correct in that the 
sleeve is actually larger than 8 inches, it’s an 18 inch sleeve that comes out across 101, 
there is an 8 inch ductile line within it. The portion that is unsleeved is actually the portion 
that goes south from that manhole that I discussed at the intersection, and that line is 12 
inch SDR pipe. What I neglected to remember is that the line across Wallace Road is also 
sleeved so effectively that 12 inch line comes further south to another manhole and then 
extends west across Wallace Road, also in an 18 inch sleeve and that is also an 8 inch 
ductile line. So, I’m sorry about that. Thank you.” Ms. Evansic then said, “If I’m jumping 
the gun tell me, but what we are looking at is that we agree with retaining the Pines area, 
the Boynton Street study area, the Sebbins Pond, and we would recommend removing the 
Route 101/Nashua Road to Covenant Way from the sewer district master plan study, 
however that does not mean we are going to prejudice that private development. Does that 
work for you Mike?” to which Mr.Sills and the rest of the committee were in agreeance. 
Ms. Hebert then asked, “And the process for beginning the sewer master plan update would 
involve hiring a consultant, and there may be some outreach with the community or with 
this group?” Ms. Douglas responded, “there would absolutely be, there would be a lot of 
communication with this group, and we’d be reaching out for public input, and also 
presenting any studies and findings to the Council.” Ms. Evansic asked, “So what do you 
need from this committee for that to proceed?” Ms. Douglas responded, “So for this we’ll 
make a recommendation, we’ll draft up a recommendation from this for Council. Brian and 
I have talked about putting the sewer master plan in as a CIP project this year, and with that 
the recommendation from the Water Sewer Advisory Committee, and if that’s approved 

 
 
Town of Bedford, NH 
14 of 14
 
 
and the funding is available, we’ll start moving forward with that.” Ms. Evansic asked, “Do 
you need a motion or something official from us?” Ms. Douglas responded, “Yes, I think a 
motion for those areas, and even if you wanted to make Sebbins a priority we could include 
that as well.” Ms. Evansic then said, “Mike, technically, as the chair I’m not allowed to 
make a motion.” To which Mr. Sills replied, “Oh, right, I make a motion on a preliminary 
basis, those areas we discussed for the master plan study.” Ms. Douglas seconds the 
motion. Ms. Evansic asked, “All in favor?” to which all responded in favor. 
 
9. Set the Next Meeting Date – May 14, 2026 
 
Ms. Evansic said, “Okay, let’s see here, set the next meeting date.” She then as, “Wait, is 
there anything else? Am I right? Are we good, is that the agenda?” Ms. Douglas replied, 
“That is the agenda, and just for that it has been requested that we change the time from 
7:45am – 8:30am.” Mr. Sills then asked, “Until when?” Ms. Douglas then confirmed, “8:30 
in the morning.” Mr. Sills then questioned, “Still on Thursdays?” Ms. Douglas then 
confirmed, “Yes, Thursdays.” Mr. Sills responded, “That’s a problem for me, I have a 10 
O’clock class…” He then mulled it over and agreed to 8:30am on Thursdays providing 
there will still be coffee and donuts. Everyone agreed. Ms. Evansic asked, “Do I need a 
motion for that, well you guys so moved. Okay, motion to adjourn.” Mr. Sills and Ms. 
Douglas second. All were in favor. The meeting was adjourned at 8:58 am.