CONNOQUENESSING TWP — Township officials Thursday night promised residents a public forum on a proposed multi-million-dollar plan to build a public sewage treatment plant, and asked them to hold their comments until that event.

Supervisor Terry Steinheiser, the board chairman, also told residents that the written comment period for the plan, which originally expired Monday, also would be extended.

About 40 people attended Thursday’s meeting, prompting Steinheiser to call for a motion promising that the township would advertise the arrangements of a special meeting, at a larger venue within two weeks.

“It’s like sardines in here,” Steinheiser said of the effect of the large crowd on the township’s municipal building.

Steinheiser tried to assure residents, some of whom are frustrated over what they said was a lack of transparency regarding the project that township officials wanted to hear their opinions of the plan.

The project is part of the township’s state-mandated Act 537 Plan.

“It’s not that we’ve been working behind your back,” he said. “The (Department of Environmental Protection) mandates us and says ‘get your engineer on this.’ ”

Steinheiser told residents that DEP officials had threatened to withhold permits necessary for building construction and repairs unless the township works to expand sewage treatment capacity.

“We’re not sitting here shoving this down your throat. We have to comply. It’s the state that’s making us comply on this,” Steinheiser said.

Currently sewage treatment is provided through a dozen private, small treatment facilities that serve housing developments, as well as a patchwork of on-lot septic systems that serve individual residents.

The proposed plan, in its current form, would construct a treatment plant near the intersection of Dick Road and Boy Scout Road. That plant would serve the township’s Route 68 corridor as well as areas to the north and south of that Road.

The cost of the project’s first phase is estimated at $14.8 million, and would take about five years to complete. A second phase, which would bring public sewer service to The Woodlands, would add more than $5 million to that price tag and would be “implemented later,” according to the plan.

Residents who still opted to speak their minds Thursday said they were opposed to the plan and concerned by the way township officials had gone about putting the proposal together.

Charlotte Grimme, who lives at 734 Dick Road with her husband, Jon, asked why township officials never notified her that the proposed treatment plant would be built on their property, which Grimme said was home to a fragile ecosystem that included endangered species and is in a flood plain.

“It seems environmentally irresponsible to dump sewage into a creek, even if it’s treated,” she said.

Grimme said she and her husband bought the property as a retirement home, and planned to dedicate it as a nature preserve after they die. She vowed to fight to keep the proposed plant off the property, and to make township officials seize it using eminent domain.

“We are not going to let it go,” Grimme said.

Township officials did not answer Grimme’s questions.

Resident Christine Klink also spoke, questioning why the treatment plant was needed when, she said, 90 percent of the on-site septic systems in the township passed a recent inspection. Klink also questioned the specifics of the plan, saying she wanted the township to consider alternatives and to survey residents to see what they preferred.

Supervisor Ray Kroll defended the township’s process of compiling the plan, and said it hasn’t been a quick or secretive process at all.

“We’ve been talking about this at every public meeting for two years,” Kroll said.

Steinheiser said residents should know that, while the proposed project is still in its preliminary stages and open for revision, the concept of public sewage in the township is not.

“It’s preliminary, but it’s imminent, It’s going to happen,” Steinheiser said. “We’re open to ideas. We do want your opinions. (But) it’s absolutely forced upon us that we need to proceed with this.”