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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowState officials are drafting plans to spend nearly $122 million in federal stimulus money to clean up Indiana’s aging, overflow-prone sewers and upgrade its drinking water systems.
Although federal agencies are still fine-tuning details of how the nation’s $787 billion stimulus package can be spent, Friday was the first deadline for communities seeking money set aside for sewer or drinking water systems.
Indiana cities and towns competing for a share of that money had to submit applications by day’s end for the projects they hope get stimulus funds. Officials expect to have a final tally today of how many applied for the aid.
Out of the $122 million Indiana will get for sewer and water infrastructure, most – about $94.4 million – will go for loans and grants for some of the nearly 100 Indiana cities with sewers that regularly send human waste into the state’s rivers and streams.
That money, a small share of Indiana’s estimated $4.3 billion slice of the stimulus package, will help finance projects ranging from sewer plant expansions to underground sewage storage tunnels that can hold the waste until it can be treated.
But it falls far short of what’s needed to fix the antiquated sewers that foul Indiana waterways with a fetid mixture of sanitary waste whenever it rains or snows. Those discharges can cause fish kills and sicken swimmers and boaters.
“Whatever money we’re getting in the stimulus package, while it’s going to be a
great help, it certainly won’t solve the problem,” said Cyndi Wagner, wet weather section chief of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s Office of Water Quality.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that fixing Indiana’s sewers will cost about $4.5 billion, and the final price tag could go even higher.
Indianapolis alone has already committed to spending about $1.73 billion to improve its sewers, in part by building underground tunnels to capture sewage waste. Dozens of other Indiana cities face sewer upgrade costs in the tens of millions of dollars.
Ninety-eight Indiana communities have sewers built from the late 1800s to the mid-20th century that carry both storm runoff and sanitary waste. Those outdated “combined” systems discharge torrents of diluted human waste into waterways in wet weather.
The Indiana Finance Authority is overseeing the money that will go toward sewer upgrades, as well as another $27.2 million in stimulus money intended for improvements to water-purification plants, water mains and other drinking water related projects.
After Friday’s application deadline for the sewer and water funds, cities and town next face a March 13 deadline to submit detailed engineering plans for their proposals. Only projects that can get under way by December qualify for the stimulus money.
But at least 12 Indiana communities already know they’re eligible and likely to receive up to $36 million because their construction projects – four water main projects and eight sewer-related projects – are either ready to go or awaiting final approval. They range from $9.6 million to upgrade Peru’s sewage treatment plant to $320,000 for a similar project in Dugger, in southern Indiana.
Jennifer Alvey, the finance authority’s state public finance director, said half of Indiana’s $122 million for sewers and water plants will be disbursed in grants and the other half will be low-interest or zero-interest loans.
“Until we know what all the projects are in the pipeline we won’t know what the rates will be but we do expect to have some portion of that at zero percent,” she said.
The stimulus funding will reinforce money already in two state funds devoted to low-interest loans for sewer and drinking water upgrades. Between them, loans totaling $168 million were disbursed in state fiscal year 2008 for various projects. Another $200 million has been set aside for the two funds this fiscal year.
Sixty-six of Indiana’s 98 cities and towns with combined sewer systems have state-approved plans detailing their plans to curtail those overflows. Another 24 must complete their plans by the start of 2011, while the remaining eight are involved in federal consent decrees that IDEM is helping EPA oversee, Wagner said.
Indiana is far from alone in its problematic sewers – about 770 cities and towns in 31 states mostly in the Northeast, the Great Lakes region and the Pacific Northwest have the same type of outdated sewers.
The EPA has estimated that fixing those aging sewers will cost about $45 billion. But the Wet Weather Partnership, a national coalition of sewer-challenged communities, believes the actual cost is somewhere between $100 billion and $200 billion.
The stimulus plan sets aside about $4 billion nationwide for sewer upgrades.
“For most states, it’s a drop in the bucket, so a nice gesture but not something that will be more than a fleeting bump,” said Paul Calamita, the Richmond, Va.-based group’s general counsel.
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