The comment period on the $389 million Combined Sewer Overflow project is under way, and the state is certain to get a response from a particularly angry group, the Utility Contractor’s Association.
The group, a local chapter of a national association, represents gas utility, water delivery, waste-water treatment, and other workers in utility-related industries. It is fighting a proposal to bring state water bodies up to federal Clean Water Act standards by building large tunnels in Providence and Pawtucket. The tunnels would catch rainwater that forces sewer pipes to overflow into Narragansett Bay.
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Conceived in 1993, the project has been scaled back and dissected by a group of stakeholders that battled over the various alternatives to meeting the federal standards, and is now nearing approval. The state Department of Environmental Management Feb. 19 officially started the 30-day public comment period on its intent to issue a Finding Of No Significant Impact (FONSI) on the environmental aspects of the project.
Once the comment period is over, DEM can approve the project and the Narragansett Bay Commission can begin designing phase one of the three-phase project, which will take 22 years to complete and cost rate payers a total of $389 million.
But if 25 individuals decide to comment on the FONSI, or if a government agency or a group that represents 25 or more individuals decides to comment, DEM will be forced to hold a public hearing before it can give the Bay Commission the green light.
And it appears that will be the case, as the Utility Contractor’s Association, which has nearly 30 members, is prepared to fight the proposal to the end. The group, which was represented in the stakeholders process which debated the various alternatives before arriving on the current proposal – the 17th alternative considered – maintains that the current proposal would be too costly, inefficient, and would fail to put local laborers to work.
The plan that the commission has settled on calls for building a tunnel from the Fields Point wastewater treatment plant in Providence to the Foundry Building, and a separate tunnel in Pawtucket that would carry runoff water to the Bucklin Point wastewater plant in East Providence.
The system is necessary because of the nature of the sewer system today. When sewer pipes were originally installed they carried all wastes, residential, commercial, and rainwater, directly into the Bay. Early this century, shafts were installed to direct residential and commercial wastes to the treatment plants.
The problem is that when it rains too much the rainwater mixes with sewage and washes it into the Bay, which forces DEM to close the Bay to shell-fishing, as well as swimming. Untreated water now reaches the Bay an average of 70 times a year. According to the commission, the proposed project would cut that number to four.
But the Utility Contractor’s Association argues that there’s a better way to do the job, and one that would put more Rhode Islanders to work. It argues that the state should place sewer separations at each of the overflow points in the Narragansett Bay Commission’s territory. A sewer separation captures rainwater that the current pipes cannot handle and directs it into the Bay without its being mixed with sewage. Though rainwater runoff does contain some contamination from animal wastes and street pollutants, the water does not have to be treated because the levels of pollution are too low, members note.
The group’s plan, which has been implemented in Cambridge, Mass., and Norwich, Conn., was discussed during the stakeholder review process, which lasted some 18 months. The idea, however, was rejected as being too expensive. Association members, however, disagree, saying that based on the average cost per mile of the projects done in Norwich and Cambridge, 212 miles of combined sewer storm and sanitary sewers could be separated for an estimated construction cost of $382 million.
“Our feeling is that complete separation is the way to go,” said Allen B. Schwartz, executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the association.
Association members cite several reasons. One, they say, is that aging water and gas mains could be replaced – for a lot less money – while the streets are being dug up to install the sewer separations. The association also argues that the environmental improvement would be realized sooner by using sewer separations than with the three-phase tunnel project.
But jobs is the biggest concern. The association notes that there are no contractors in Rhode Island, or even this part of the country, that can handle the tunnel project. Thus, the state will not be putting its own residents to work, association members say.
But, “The biggest issue we see is employment,” said Ted Bragger, president of A.E. Bragger Construction Co. Inc. in Warwick and a past president of the national Utility Contractor’s Association. The association asserts that there are no contractors in Rhode Island or in this region big enough for the job, and for that reason, workers from Rhode Island would not be hired.
But the Narragansett Bay Commission disputes the association’s findings. Thomas Brueckner, engineering manager for the commission, said the idea was rejected at the stakeholder level because it is far more expensive, as much as $559 million for the entire project. While the current, $389 million project being considered does include some sewer separations, using sewer separations to accomplish the entire job would be impractical, Brueckner said.
Brueckner dismissed the concern that that the tunnel project would not put Rhode Islanders to work, saying that while the main contractor would be from out of state, the subcontractors and other workers would be hired locally.
Nonetheless, DEM, which placed an advertisement for the 30-day public comment period in the Providence Journal Feb. 19, will accept written comments until then. If there are enough comments it will hold a public hearing about a month later. But Angelo Liberti, a supervising sanitary engineer with DEM’s Office of Water Resources, said the hearing will be held so that concerned parties may state their concerns about the environmental impacts of the project only.
