A town's sewer system isn't the first topic on everyone's lips at the local coffee shop each morning. And few politicians have ever run for office based on their glittering sewer record.

It's an unsexy issue, in the extreme. It doesn't generate big headlines and doesn't generate votes the way another hol- low premise to cut taxes will.

But sewers: a) affect most everyone, and b) cost money. Which means, you'd better hope someone is paying attention.

In Plainville, Town Manager John Bohenko is paying attention and has been paying attention for a long time. Bohenko, you see, did not graduate from the University of Bury Your Head m the Sand with a degree in ostrich-like behavior.

He realizes that since the town built a Water Pollution Control Plant nearly 20 years ago, scant attention has been paid to it. Preventive maintenance is what it's called and money is what it costs. But it takes some vision and courage to sink taxpayer dollars into something like a sewer plant for maintenance and upgrades. In these past 20 years, federal and state guidelines have become strict, unforgiving and onerous. Toy with the DEP and they'll shut you down.

The quandary Bohenko faced was this: Having failed to put any money into the plant or set aside money for maintenance over the years, Plainville needed to face the situation while at the same time look at what the future held. What the future holds, maybe not today but more likely in five years, is problems. A sewer plant is no different than a highway. Build it and ignore it for 20 years and then see what you have to pay.

Much to its credit, the present town council did begin to face up to the situation and this year levied a $50 annual fee to sewer users to be set aside for capital projects. It's a great start, but as most everyone agrees, it's a drop in the bucket.

Bohenko has come up with an answer though. It is radically new and like anything new, it makes people nervous. Like anything new there is some degree of risk, but balancing the present options and weighing the future alternatives it deserves council support, should the members put it to a vote next week.

“It” is a version of privatization. In a nutshell, the concept Bohenko has put together and which would resolve and relieve past and future saver plant woes, is to lease the sewer plant to a firm which will pay the town of Plainville for that opportunity. In turn, the private firm would be responsible for ALL capital improvements, complying with ALL state and federal regulations and ALL operating expenses. Basically, Plainville could hand off the respon- sibility and the worry to someone else and get paid for it.

Ah, but there must be a catch you say. Well certainly no- thing in this world is free. The private company, like the town, needs revenues and no one disagrees that Plainville residents will face sewer use increases m the next 10 years whether the sewer plant is privatized or the town continues to try to operate it as it has. But if the plant were leased to a private firm, the money received from the lease agree- ment could, in theory, be used to dull some of those rate increases.

If the private firm in question were some fly-by-night crowd, this discussion would be over. But what makes the privatization concept worth recommending is that the company is Ogden Yorkshire. If that sounds familiar, it ought to. Ogden is the same company which operates the trash to energy plant in Bristol. The trash to energy concept, like the sewer plant lease idea, was once a foreign, scary notion. It was new, uncharted waters. But Plainville was one of the pioneers, and had the courage to make the leap. Today, Plainville residents don't face wild upward spikes in hash costs — there is predictability and therefore an ability to plan budget-wise. The biggest enemy of budget planning is unexpected costs. The leasing of the sewage plant would eliminate what will become a major worry for Plainville.