Sewer rates in the Providence metropolitan area could rise once more as the Narragansett Bay Commission tackles the next phase of a major environmental project.
Last week, the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council provided the last major permit required for the roughly $300 million project that seeks to reduce the amount of raw sewage spilling into Narragansett Bay. The commission plans to advertise construction contracts this spring and start work in the fall.
As work progresses, the commission expects rates to rise; for the average customer about $550 a year in 2014 from about $400 now. Rates for commercial users will also increase, but the amount will vary depending on water usage. All the increases would require approval from the R.I. Public Utilities Commission.
The increases, if they occur, would come after the commission already doubled rates to pay for the first phase of the project, which included a massive tunnel under Providence.
“The news is not overwhelmingly good [but] … the rates are rising slower than in other parts of the country,” bay commission spokeswoman Jamie Samons said.
The commission says a 2009 survey by the Metropolitan Water Reuse Authority found the average major city charged $523 for 120 hundred cubic feet of water – a standard unit of measure in the water industry. Providence charges $467.
The commission says it has little choice but to increase rates. The agency reached an agreement with the R.I. Department of Environmental Management in 1994 to curtail the amount of raw sewage that its pipes spilled into the Narragansett Bay watershed.
The problem finds its roots in the 19th century when engineers installed one set of pipes to carry both sewage and runoff from streets. That worked for a while but soon the growth of the metro area meant more sewage. Meanwhile, more paved surfaces forced more water into the drains. The system can no longer keep up and, especially during heavy rainstorms, overflows, releasing some 2.2 billion gallons of sewage each year into the watershed.
So two decades ago engineers crafted the three-phase Combined Sewer Overflow project to separate sewage and stormwater pipes in some places, add capacity in others and build new piping elsewhere.
The first step, undertaken between 2001 and 2008, installed a 26-foot in diameter, 300-foot-long tunnel 300 feet under Providence. The tunnel holds 65 million gallons of stormwater and sewage until the Fields Point Wastewater Treatment Plant can handle it.
The project cost $359 million, making it one of the priciest public works projects in the state’s history.
Phase II primarily consists of building two smaller tunnels branching off the tunnel completed in 2008. Known as interceptors, the pipes – 18 inches to 48 inches wide – will collect runoff headed toward the Seekonk and Woonasquatucket rivers. The Seekonk Interceptor will be 11,200 feet long, the Woonasquatucket Interceptor 19,150 feet long. Both will sit about 30 feet underground, making the project highly visible, unlike Phase I that took place hundreds of feet below the surface.
The commission wants construction wrapped up by 2014 to meet agreements made with environmental agencies.
And the quasi-public agency that serves 10 communities expects its customers to likely foot the entire bill.
“It’s a pretty dire arena out there for funding infrastructure projects for water and wastewater,” Samons said.
The puts the commission in the likely position of floating bonds to pay for the project. Its customers, in turn, will repay them over time.
And customers could be paying for some time. After Phase II, there’s Phase III, which calls for the construction of two massive tunnels under Central Falls and Pawtucket and could cost millions of dollars more.
But Samons said the commission is holding out hope that Phases I and II will prove so effective that it can scrap or scale back Phase III. •
