By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- A troubled portion of the town sewer system on Highland Road is prompting the town board to look at converting the town’s sewer districts into one.

Dennis Kemmison, who manages a property on that road, said they have had four sewer breaks that sent sewage into residences.

“In the last two years we’ve had approximately four breaks there, major breaks … It floods out the apartments I manage. We have to call somebody with a big machine and suck all the sewage out. It’s pretty terrible,” Kemmison told the board. “This last time there was no salvaging carpets or anything. It was flooded. I have an 86-year-old lady that’s on dialysis. And I have a 91-year-old also … One of them called me crying because she was standing in approximately 4 inches of sewage.”

He said the most recent incident came with a $9,100 cleanup bill.

Town Supervisor Joseph Gray said be thinks the best way to address the issue is to make the entire town under a single sewer district so all of the users are paying a smaller maintenance fee to repair the broken line, rather than a higher fee assessed to users in what is now that district.

“The cost per user would be a lot less across four districts than the one district,” Gray said.

“That makes a lot of sense. The type of maintenance work you’re talking about doing is a standard district expense,” town attorney Eric Gustafson told Gray.

Gray said the final say on consolidating the districts could go to the voters.

“If this board votes to combine those districts, then the permissive referendum clause kicks in and people can say ‘we want to vote on it,’” he said, and Gustafson said he’s correct.

The council voted 4-0 to allow Gray to contact Tisdale Associates in Canton to assess the situation and come up with a plan.