If Robert Harris wants to take a shower, the Wiscasset man goes to his mother-in-law’s house in Round Pond. That’s also where his wife Carolyn Lane Harris was doing their laundry on April 2, he said.

At home at 207 Old Ferry Road, the couple uses paper plates and plastic forks. It isn’t the life Robert Harris said they pictured when they moved to town. But all the measures minimize the water that goes down the drain and later has to be drawn out of the septic tank in the front yard.

Since January, the tank has been pumped three times, Harris said.

The home’s septic system is on a sewer line that goes to the town’s nearby pump station, he said. But the waste can’t get that far, due to a clog in the line, under the road, down the road from his home, Harris said.

Harris said he was surprised to hear from town officials that the town doesn’t own the line, and that it’s up to him, not the town, to fix it. In addition to the hundreds of dollars in septic tank pumping, he spent hundreds more on a contractor who tried to jet the clog, Harris said.

The line was put in when a prior owner was adding a third bedroom and had to get a bigger septic tank, Harris said. All his checking for a covenant regarding the line has come up empty, so he questions the line’s ownership.

Issues over who owns it and who is responsible for repair costs could have been sorted out later, he said. He said the town should have fixed the line in the meantime so that he and his wife could get back to a normal routine at home.

But he’s still going to Round Pond every other day, and he’s frustrated.

“We moved here because it was a beautiful place, and we thought this was going to be a nice little place to live, and then it’s turned into a nightmare.

“I love the town, and there’s some people here that I really, really respect and I like, but the politics of the town have just completely dumbfounded me .... It makes me ashamed that I live in a town that would do that to any individual. They’re not giving me any help,” he said. “And I’ve given them every opportunity to help me.”

The Wiscasset Newspaper sought the town’s position from Town Manager Marian Anderson. On Monday, April 6, Anderson provided an email copy of her April 3 letter to Harris. “The town is very sorry you are experiencing such a frustrating situation,” Anderson writes to the homeowner.

“The town does not own the sewer line that runs from the manhole ... to your home,” the letter continues. It states that the home’s prior owners, Robert and Carol MacDonald, had the line privately installed in 1994, and that Robert MacDonald’s son confirmed to the town that his father paid contractors to do the work.

The town’s title research turned up no easements in the registry of deeds regarding the line, Anderson writes.

“We have continued to try and track down historical information for your benefit so that you can understand where this line runs and what is necessary for you to do to clean up the ownership rights ... so that we can play as helpful a role as we are able to play.

“If you need to dig up a portion of Old Ferry Road to access the line and undertake repairs, this will require a road opening permit from the board of selectmen. Please contact me if you want to pursue this,” the letter to Harris said. It notes that the permits require roads’ conditions to be restored following the work. If parts of other lots have to be dug up, Harris would need easements from those lots’ owners, according to the letter.

Harris hadn’t seen the letter yet, so the newspaper forwarded him the email.

In a telephone interview afterward, he said he wasn’t surprised that it maintains that the town doesn’t own the line.

That’s what town officials have told him all along, he said.

Harris said his hope in contacting the newspaper and a Portland television station was to see if other people are in similar situations with their towns, and to make all homeowners aware that it can happen. He would like to see state legislation to help property owners get their sewer issues resolved. He said he has talked with Maine District 87 Rep. Jeffery Hanley, R-Pittston, about the idea. Reached Monday, Hanley said he would be looking into whether legislation would be practical. He has contacted Wiscasset and state officials to try to help Harris get his situation resolved, Hanley said.

Harris said he planned to speak with a lawyer about the town’s letter. He isn’t sure when or how the line will get fixed. If he has the work done, he would be concerned that he was taking full responsibility for the line, he said. He continued to disagree with the town’s stance that it doesn’t own the line.