AQUIFER PROJECT GETS CASH INJECTION

Billion-dollar plan to boost underground supply gets boost

A billion-dollar plan to inject treated wastewater into the rapidly-shrinking aquifer where hundreds of thousands of Tidewater Virginians get their drinking water has lined up major parts of the money needed.

The Virginia Resources Authority on Wednesday lent $100 million to the Hampton Roads Sanitation District for its SWIFT (Sustainable Water Infrastructure for Tomorrow) program and other projects.

HRSD expects to sign on the first chunk of a $930 million federal loan in September, finance director Jay Bernas said.

The SWIFT project aims to

eventually inject 120 million gallons a day of treated water deep underground, to begin replenishing the aquifer that supplies water to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses that could see wells run dry in the decades to come. But it comes at a big financial cost, and some consumers don’t like the idea of recycling treated wastewater.

Virginians are currently drawing about 100 million gallons a day from the aquifer, with the result that groundwater levels in parts of eastern Virginia have dropped 200 feet over the past century.

HRSD wants to have five plants in operation by 2030. It has put the cost at $1 billion. It hopes to start work on the first, at its James River plant in Newport News, later this year. HRSD’s SWIFT research center in Suffolk has been injecting 1 million gallons of treated water a day into the aquifer.

SWIFT plants will treat wastewater to drinking water standards. The treated water would be injected into the aquifer far from any drinking water wells.

While water does move through the aquifer, it does so only slowly and HRSD officials have said it would take many decades for the treated water to reach any well — and once drawn from a well, would be treated again, just as groundwater is now.

Depletion of the aquifer has already led to sharp cuts in the amounts regulators allow users to draw. While those amounts are above users’ current draws, future projected growth in James City County could bump the county’s water utility up above its permitted maximum in the near future.

Secretary of Natural Resources Matthew J. Strickler said the SWIFT project will reduce the impact of climate change and conserve water resources in Hampton Roads. In addition to slowing depletion of the aquifer, the project will reduce the amount of less-treated wastewater HRSD releases into the James and York rivers.

The VRA loan charges interest at just 1.15% over 20 years. That translates to a savings of $16 million over what it would cost to borrow money on the bond market, Bernas said. That’s money that ratepayers won’t have to pick up.

HRSD has estimated that the $930 million federal loan, which comes through the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act Program, will save its rate payers more than $243 million in financing costs.

HRSD serves 18 cities and counties in southeast Virginia by effectively treating more than 150 million gallons of wastewater daily.