A red-and-white Save The Bay bumper sticker clings to the window in Joel Burke’s ground floor office at the Warwick sewer plant. The sticker 6 feet above the floor serves as a constant reminder that on March 30, 2010, a deluge of rainwater, raw sewage and water from the Pawtuxet River overwhelmed the plant serving some 20,000 homes and businesses in Warwick to that level and forced the mayor to request that people hooked up into the city’s sewage system not flush their toilets.
A team of contractors and plant workers has spent the past six months rebuilding the network of buildings, pipes, monitoring equipment and treatment tanks that turn raw sewage into clean water, known as effluent. Superintendent Joel Burke estimates the plant is about 70 percent operational, with another six months required to restore everything to preflood levels.
“The first two or three months were probably some of the worst types of stress I’ve been under, and I do not want to repeat it,” Burke said.
The flooding shut down the plant for a week as workers watched hopelessly as raw sewage flowing into the plant spilled directly into the Pawtuxet River. Eventually, with the help of pumps brought in from as far away as Michigan, the waters receded and repairs started.
Workers replaced everything with a circuit board – which with modern technology meant virtually every electronic device from the pump controls to the phone system. New furniture and supplies were purchased and moved into offices refurbished after workers stripped them down to the studs. Hundreds of feet of underground electrical wiring must still be replaced.
The city has spent about $5 million on repairs. Burke expects to use about $8.5 million of Warwick’s citywide catastrophe insurance policy. After that, Burke expects another $5 million to $6 million in repairs, pushing the total bill to about $14 million.
(By way of comparison, the Warwick Sewer Authority’s entire annual budget is $17 million, including $12 million in debt costs.)
“The paperwork [for] this project is staggering,” Burke said.
Once the insurance agents complete a review, Burke will repeat the process with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials. He hopes FEMA will help pay the bills not covered by the city’s insurance, although even if it does, the agency will only pay a maximum of 75 percent of the costs, forcing the city to kick in the rest. So just to be safe, the authority is also applying for grants, including one from the U.S. Department of Energy to install energy-efficient equipment.
Should his strategy work, FEMA and grant money would likely spare the city from turning to sewer customers to pay the bill.
There has been a silver lining to the rebuilding process, though. The insurance policy through the Rhode Island Interlocal Risk Management Trust paid for the replacement of damaged equipment with new, energy-efficient equipment. Workers overhauled the 20-year-old lab with modern equipment at a cost of $90,000. The plant installed new energy-efficient lighting and ventilation systems that should save money and energy down the road.
“We’re going to have a much more efficient and effective sewer plant, and I think that’s a real win, not only for our ratepayers but also for the environment,” Mayor Scott Avedisian said.
On a smaller scale, sewer authority officials resized offices, put computer jacks in the right places, replaced antiquated furniture and redecorated.
“The place looks better than before,” said sewer authority Executive Director Janine Burke, who is not related to Joel.
The move to new offices came as a welcome relief for the authority’s employees. For three months, they shared quarters in an office building down the road with staff from the city’s animal shelter, which borders the sewer plant and also flooded. While at the temporary quarters, the sewer authority staff shared office space with some four-legged friends as well.
“The good thing about everything that happened in the flood is it really did give us a real awakening that wastewater treatment really needs to be part of our emergency planning,” Avedisian said.
The sewer plant now has emergency pumps in reserve that can pump incoming sewage directly into the Pawtuxet River. Not an ideal situation, but one that would avoid the plant and its equipment being submerged. Avedisian said lines of communication among various city departments have been improved and new action plans written.
Burke, the superintendent, has worked with the R.I. Department of Environmental Management and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to find better weather forecasts specific to the area around the plant and the Pawtuxet River. The sewer authority is also planning to apply for federal money to pay for raising the dike surrounding the plant by as much as 3 feet. During the March floods, water from the bordering Pawtuxet River overtopped the dike.
The city has no plans to move the plant, as some residents have suggested. Burke said building a new plant would require a reorganization of pipes pitched for miles so sewer flows to the existing plant via gravity. Diverting sewage to another treatment plant is also not an option because the connections do not exist and the height of the pipes would require new and expensive pumping stations.
So the best the sewer authority can do is prepare. Meteorologists and sewer officials say the series of weather events that led to the flooding is unlikely to occur again. But Burke has still spent much of the past six months looking at the bumper sticker on his window and considering the worst.
“I think we’re pretty well prepared now,” he said. •
