Second in a series by Cliff Lewis
The City of Lancaster spends $12 million a year on its wastewater treatment operations. And of all the material that is pumped and processed through the New Danville Pike plant, roughly 10% derives from relatively clean storm water runoff. Between the heightened cost of running a combined sanitary and storm water system and the future potential of federal environmental fines, the City is faced with a crucial question of how to improve its storm water management. And, for now, none of the answers are easy on the pocketbook.
The most obvious and likely most expensive solution is to replace the entire combined system with a modern separated one. Based on a 1998 study, City wastewater manager Brian Harner estimated that, in today’s market, such an overhaul would cost the City about $250 million.
A spokesman from the Pennsylvania Department of Environment Protection declined to provide NewsLanc with examples of similar projects in the state, noting that the expenses can vary widely depending on the type of streets and infrastructure present as well as the rates of area contractors.
Despite the expense, the City of Lancaster expects that such a total separation will occur somewhere in the distant future. For this reason alone, whenever the City lays new sewer lines (such as in the remediation of the former Armstrong site), those lines are always separated. Since these new lines ultimately flow into the old combined system, they do not provide any CSO relief; and, according to public works director Charlotte Katzenmoyer, the City is under no legal requirement to install separated pipes.
Perhaps the most talked-about solution has been the City’s $70 million proposal to construct a 10 million gallon holding tank east of the city, on the site of a former treatment plant near Pitney Road. The tank would serve to retain overflow during rainfall events to be treated once the system has “caught up” with its in-flow.
According to Katzenmoyer, the tank would be more than just a temporary fix. “It is a permanent solution,” she asserted. However, Katzenmoyer later acknowledged that, though “permanent,” the project would only address “a fraction of what we actually have in overflow. And that’s only one of our basins, and its not even the most concentrated basin in terms of overflows.”
A solution for the entire city, Katzenmoyer said, will have to be approached “basin by basin”—of which the city has five.
The storage tank, Katzenmoyer noted, is the “easiest [project] to address immediately to make the EPA happy—that we’re moving forward with something, at least. Plus we have land available.”
One problem that the tank would not address is the system’s operational expenses. By merely storing excess wastewater for later processing, the tank would actually increase the volume ultimately sent through the treatment plant and require additional spending for energy and chemicals.
Some are calling for a CSO solution that bypasses the sewer system entirely. The local nonprofit LIVE Green will soon be spearheading a “green infrastructure plan” to gauge the CSO-reducing the potential of introducing porous pavements, green roofs, and household rain collection barrels in Lancaster City. The study will be funded with a grant from the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
“We’re trying to advance one solution,” said LIVE president Danene Sorace, “Is it going to be the end-all-be-all solution? No. We’re going to need to continue to have [traditional] ‘grey’ infrastructure, we’re going to need a wastewater treatment plant, and we’re going to need to do other things that are more ‘grey.’ But, at the same time, if we only have so much money and we have this problem, how can we best utilize the resources?”
Sorace noted that her organization has been working alongside the City in investigating these possibilities: “Our job is to be value-added. Not to be another distraction,” she said.
Another fix being considered by the City is to strategically separate the sewers in high volume areas reasonably close to a storm water deposit point. According to Katzenmoyer, the basins with the highest rates of runoff would inherently lack available space for storage tank construction; in such cases, she said, strategic separation may be the only viable solution.
Such an approach would divert the area’s storm water from the waste water treatment plant altogether, reducing overflow and relieving operational costs. It would also serve as a de facto phase in the City’s distant-future effort to convert to a separated system.
Since the city’s hydraulic model is not yet complete, Katzenmoyer was unable to specify where such projects might occur or roughly how much CSO could be avoided.
According to Harner, the City typically spends $150 per foot of sewer main replacement, as well as about $1,000 to replace the laterals connected to each residence. If that procedure were performed to install a dual system, Harner said that those rates would likely double.
Funding is by far the greatest barrier to pursuing any one of the City’s current options. For the introduction of new separated lines, Katzenmoyer flatly said that the City does “not have the money available” for any such improvements. Toward the $70 million tank, the City has applied for grant dollars as well as federal appropriations. But the potential dollars to be yielded through these channels, Katzenmoyer said, would be “a drop in the bucket compared to that 70 million tab.”
Next installment: How to pay the 21st century sewer bill?
