City at sewer-fix crossroads
Fort Smith weighing $204M federal decree to repair lines
FORT SMITH — Fort Smith officials are tentatively scheduled to vote on entering into a federal consent decree Dec. 16 that will obligate the city to spend at least $204 million over 12 years and increase residents’ sewer bills to fix the city’s sewer system.
The fixes will include construction totaling an estimated $77 million to increase sewer system line capacity, $115 million to fix or replace leaking and broken lines, and $12.5 million to assess the condition of the city’s 500 miles of sewer lines.
The cost of operations and maintenance of the sewer system and the 82 additional wastewater workers needed to implement the decree has not been calculated, City Administrator Ray Gosack said. Officials hope to have those and other figures, such as a more accurate assessment of the impact on residents’ utility bills, for the city directors Tuesday when they meet again to discuss the proposed consent decree.
The city officials have been working with cost estimates because the Department of Justice was still drawing up the 200-page consent decree as of Tuesday, Gosack said. He said federal officials want city directors to vote on the decree by mid-December so it can be filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Smith by the end of the month.
With what they know so far, city consultant David Naumann of Burns and McDonnell of Kansas City, Mo., told directors that it’s estimated that an average monthly utility bill of $43, which includes water and sewer service charges, will increase incrementally over five years to $84. All of the increase is expected to be in sewer service charges, he said.
Exact rate increase information won’t be available until a rate study is completed, probably in February, Gosack said.
“This is going to be devastating to people on a fixed income,” City Director George Catsavis said.
The rate increases will fund much of the improvements up to about 2020, Gosack said, because sales taxes are tied up in so many bond issues now that it would be economically unfeasible for the city to pile on more bond debt that would be paid for with sales taxes.
Fort Smith and representatives of the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice negotiated the agreement in two days last month at the EPA’s Dallas office. Gosack credited Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel with persuading the federal government to return to the negotiating table with the city.
The attorney general’s office had no comment Tuesday on the agreement between Fort Smith and the federal government.
City officials announced in October that the EPA and the Justice Department had cut off eight years of negotiations with Fort Smith and were planning to sue the city in federal court over decades-long violations of the federal Clean Water Act.
Fort Smith has had a chronic problem with the sewer system being overwhelmed during periods of heavy rains. The rain infiltrates the system through broken and leaking pipes. It deluges the city’s two wastewater treatment plants with stormwater and sewage, and bypasses the plants and flows untreated into the Arkansas River.
Fort Smith’s predicament is not unique. Gosack told directors that several other cities are under federal consent decrees over Clean Water Act violations. Among them are St. Louis, Memphis, San Antonio, Knoxville, Tenn., Starkville, Miss., and Chattanooga, Tenn.
Fort Smith has been working to resolve the problem, Gosack said. In a statement
“This is going to be devastating to people on a fixed
income.” — City Director George Catsavis
to directors Tuesday, Gosack said that in May 2006, voters approved the issuance of sales tax bonds to finance construction work. In three subsequent elections over the following six years, voters approved more sales tax bonds to fund the work.
The city’s proposed 2015 budget shows nearly $117 million budgeted over the next five years for wastewater construction projects paid for with sales tax construction bonds.
City directors asked if they had an alternative to the consent decree or the option not to approve it. Gosack said they could reject the consent decree but would face litigation in federal court, and the fines and economic stigma of being sued by the federal government.
“All these components, we just have to get comfortable with whether we’re going to affirm this or not,” City Director Keith Lau said. “I don’t see where we have a choice.”
City Director Philip Merry said, “Big Brother is talking.”
Gosack said the government had planned to fine the city $800,000. In the negotiations last month, he said, city officials persuaded the government to reduce the fine to $500,000 and to allow the city to pay the government $300,000 and use $200,000, plus another $200,000 in local money, to assist the city’s low-income residents in paying for repairs to their defective sewer lines.
In addition to the construction and remediation work, Fort Smith is going to have to begin a stringent and extensive sewer system management, operations and maintenance program.
It will include inspecting, assessing and cleaning all 500 miles of city sewer lines, its 23 pump stations and the city’s approximately 12,000 manholes.
The city plans to get all food-service and production entities into a program to reduce introduction of fats, oils and grease — collectively called FOG — into the sewer system to reduce the blockages and overflows they cause.
Fort Smith is to begin requiring owners of private sewer lines — those that run from houses, businesses and industries to the city’s main lines — to repair or replace leaking or broken service lines at their own expense.
Residents who are notified of service line problems will have 30 months to make the improvements or face penalties, including having their water shut off. Low-income residents would be eligible for assistance in doing this.
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Fort Smith will have to set up a program to train employees on how to keep sewer lines and related facilities up and running. It will also write detailed standard operating procedures, which Utilities Director Steve Parke said barely exist now.
Officials estimated that Fort Smith will have to hire 82 new employees over the next five years for the additional work that will be required to meet the consent decree requirements. The city Utilities Department now employs 196 people, Parke said.
The city will also need to develop an information management system to keep records on its assets and activities, its operations and maintenance programs, on private sewer service line owners, and on repair and replacement records. It also will use the system to track fats, oils and grease contributors, and to make required reports to the EPA.
For example, the city is going to have to keep records on sewer system overflows and the emergency response program it is being required to institute.
The program will consist of describing and documenting the steps taken to respond to overflows, notification of the public and media, following up with investigations to determined the cause of the overflows, drawing up a schedule for correcting the defect that caused the overflow and making annual reports to the EPA on the program.