Residents of an Ellsworth street have a leak in their water main, and would like the city to come fix it.
But Ellsworth officials say they can’t make the repair because the city doesn’t own the leaking pipe, even though it is directly connected to the local water system and carries city water to the residents.
So who does own the pipe that serves houses on Brae Drive, if not the city? That answer is not clear. But for the dozen or so residents of the street, the confusion has illustrated the challenges that can arise when a private developer puts in a road and builds houses, but then passes away without ensuring that another entity is responsible for the infrastructure serving the new neighborhood.
“A lot of people are losing sleep over this,” Jack Frost, who lives on Brae Drive, said Wednesday about himself and his neighbors. “How am I going to get out of this situation?”
Frost and a handful of Brae Drive residents met with city officials Tuesday to discuss their predicament, and to see if there might be a solution for who will maintain the main water and sewer lines that serve the street. City Manager Charlie Pearce and department heads who met with the group did not make any promises, but said they will look into the matter to see if the city might help come up with a solution.
Brae Drive, which is located just yards away from the city’s elementary and middle school, is a private road that was built in the 1980s by a developer who has since passed away, Frost said. The same developer also put in Holt Drive and Argonne Street, which run parallel to Brae Drive, but these were later accepted by the city as city streets. Brae Drive was not.
Brae Drive is too narrow to meet city standards, and the water and sewer systems that serve the homes were built in such haphazard fashion — with one manhole access point in somebody’s yard and part of the main running under someone else’s garage — that it also is not up to city codes.
Even so, Brae Drive residents say the city has in the past made repairs to the water main, but current officials say their hands are tied. The Maine Public Utilities Commission has told Ellsworth officials that because the line is private, the city is not allowed to touch it, even though it is directly tied into the city water system.
“I get what they are up against,” Frost said. “I’m not trying to be unreasonable.”
Because it is a private road, Brae Drive residents don’t get mail service directly to their houses. Instead, the U.S. Postal Service delivers mail to a delivery stand erected where the street meets Forest Avenue. In the winter, a few of them chip in to pay for a plow truck to clear snow from the road, Frost said.
The deeds to the properties on Brae Drive do not assign ownership of the road to the homeowners, Frost said, and they don’t have the money to make a major repair to the road or to the water and sewer lines. Plus, most of the lots are too small for either wells or septic tanks to be approved — but septic tanks wouldn’t be allowed anyway because state law requires homeowners to connect to municipal sewer lines that come within 200 feet of their house.
Frost said he and his wife have owned their house for 29 years. They think the road and the pipes underneath are generally in good shape, but they want there to be a plan for how to maintain them before a bigger, more expensive problem arises and then languishes because no one has the means or authority to fix it.
Frost pointed to the city’s interest in developing an access road to a potential new courthouse site and other properties off Merrill Way as an example of how the city can help private landowners. If nothing else, he would like the city to take ownership of, or get an easement to maintain, the water and sewer lines on Brae Drive.
“I really like my house,” said Frost, who works for a local bank and serves as board president for the local chamber of commerce. “My wife and I really like where we live.”
City officials said they are looking into whether they might be able to fix the pipe under an emergency provision that wouldn’t run afoul of Maine PUC prohibitions on investing public money in private water systems. They also are trying to determine if the street can be classified as abandoned, rather than just privately owned, and whether that might give them more options for maintaining the water main.
Pearce said that since Brae Drive residents brought the matter to him this fall, he has learned a lot about how private development and public infrastructure intersect. He said the city might not be able to take over the private infrastructure on Brae Drive — and it has to be careful about setting a precedent — but he would like to help the residents if there is a reasonable way to do so.
“It’s a difficult situation,” Pearce said. “You can’t always give the people the answer they want.”
