The state Department of Transportation’s top official told a group of Allenstown and Pembroke residents she’s leaning against a much-maligned DOT plan to put a fleet fueling center next to one of the state’s purest water sources.

“It’s not a done deal,” DOT Commissioner Carol Murray told about 60 residents gathered for an informational meeting at St. John’s Parish Hall. “You’re not going to wake up tomorrow, or six months from now, or a year from now, and see this thing being built.”

Later Murray said, “I’m leaning toward the answer being ‘We’re not going there.’”

Murray was discussing a decades-old DOT plan to build the department’s largest fleet fueling facility – including three 10,000-gallon fuel tanks – off Route 106, just north of the Pembroke town line.

The plan would put the facility between 1,000 and 1,500 feet from the Soucook River, 300 feet from well head protection areas in Concord and Pembroke, and about 3,000 feet from a Pembroke town well.

The well provides some of the cleanest water in the state, according to Pembroke Waterworks officials, and also feeds Allenstown and parts of Hooksett. Seven state representatives and state Sen. Jack Barnes, along with about 60 of their constitu ents, attended an the informational meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 10. After a governor’s directive to the DOT, similar meetings have been held in Concord and Pembroke in recent months.

“We are New Hampshire,” said Allenstown resident Mike Phelps. “And New Hampshire is telling you – through the Concord board, through the Pembroke board and, I’m sure, the Allenstown board – we don’t want it.”

Said State Rep. Vincent Greco, representing Pembroke, “The people are telling the government, ‘We don’t want this, it’s going to be a hazard to us.’”

DOT officials first got serious about moving forward with the facility – which would replace a current facility on Stickney Avenue in Concord – in 2005. The department chose the site, said DOT Contamination Program Manager Dale O’Connell, primarily because it’s next to a number of state facilities and directly next to the DOT’s maintenance garage. He said the spot was the department’s “preferred alternative,” and said, “the plan all along was to move the fleet fueling facility with the fleet.”

Ronald Laurence, an engineer with Jaques Whitford, a Portsmouth firm that designed the fueling facility, said it would far exceed state safety standards. The underground tanks would have two fiberglass walls encased in a 14-inch thick concrete vault. Virtually all of the components of the tanks, said Laurence, would have monitoring systems that would send out automatic alerts in the event of malfunctions like leaks.

Still area residents suggested human error, over time, could mean an irreversible contamination of the water supply. Pembroke Waterworks Superintendent Paul Whittemore said his main concern was “that day-to-day operation of filling those tanks and those dribbles.”

Hydrogeologist Dave Maclean, of the firm Geoinsight, and has been working with the Pembroke Waterworks Department, said the proposed facility would fall within what’s called a “stratified drift aquifer,” which he said are rare in New Hampshire. Such aquifers, he said, provide pure water sources because the water’s ability to move through clean sediment. He said there are only “small ribbons” of such aquifers in the state.

“And they’re precious,” Maclean said.

While Murray said she’s now leaning against the current proposal, she said the department needs more input from area communities to devise a better alternative.

“I do apologize it does feel like a done deal,” she said. “Public input is critical to everything we do.”

Barnes urged residents to keep apprised of the project. “For gosh sakes,” he said, “don’t be afraid to use the phone and call your state government.”