OXFORD — Black Bear Development is back to work on the casino.

Black Bear Community Development Director Scott Smith said a second well is being drilled and there is work on clearing stumps and producing a mulch to stabilize soils. “We’d love to have our foundation going in sometime in August,” he said.

Smith said that while Black Bear is still interested in connecting to the town’s public water supply, it is also drilling wells and exploring the option of using on-site water.

“We’re doing them in parallel,” Smith said. He said Black Bear was being careful until the company decided whether it would use public or private water.

At Thursday’s meeting of the Oxford Board of Selectmen, the board authorized the town to take a $1 million loan for the water project from Black Bear investor Bob Bahre. Black Bear is giving the town another $500,000 to pay for the water line extension project approved by Oxford voters at a special town meeting last week.

Regardless of whether Black Bear connects to the town’s water, Oxford will run water up Pigeon Hill and install a 500,000 gallon water tank there.

In June, the Board of Environmental Protection gave Black Bear until Sept. 14 to prove the site had sufficient water to meet the casino’s needs. Smith said the public water option or wells would satisfy the requirements set by the BEP.

The BEP also required Black Bear to prove it could pay for the project. In documents provided to the BEP two weeks ago, Black Bear demonstrated they had financial capacity to move forward with the project and also presented a timeline.

In a letter to the board, Key Private Bank Senior Vice President Stephen deCastro said the investors had sufficient liquid assets to pay for the estimated $60 million to complete the first phase of the casino.

A current schedule shows the building up by November, with interior work to take place during the winter months.

Previous schedules showed the casino being finished as early as December, but Smith said he has long been touting the end of the first quarter of 2012. “We’ve had our obstacles to overcome,” Smith said.

He said the schedule is weather-dependent.

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