June 2023 Vol. 78 No. 6
Newsline
Newsline: Arkansas Valley clean water pipeline project starts construction after 60-year wait
NEWSLINE
Arkansas Valley Clean Water Pipeline Project Starts Construction After 60-Year Wait
A project promised by former President John F. Kennedy to provide clean water to communities in Colorado’s Lower Arkansas Valley is now officially underway, despite a need for millions of dollars in funding.
According to statistics gathered by the Environmental Working Group, the Arkansas Valley Conduit project, which is expected to cost $600–$700 million, will supply clean water to areas with some of the highest amounts of radium-contaminated drinking water in the country. Over a long period of time, naturally occurring radium increases health risks like cancer.
The 130-mile pipeline, which is presently intended to extend from Pueblo to Lamar, was first announced by Kennedy in 1962 as a component of the broader Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, a system that carries water from the Western Slope to supply Colorado Springs and other areas. However, financial issues delayed the project.
Employees of the water system noted that while bigger cities along the Arkansas, including La Junta, established reverse osmosis systems to filter the water in the intervening decades, rural inhabitants installed their own filtration systems in their houses, bought bottled water, or just utilized the water as is.
According to OutThere Colorado, which originally reported the story, the project has already secured around $151 million in federal money, of which $60 million is from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, according to the authorities. Long said the project needs an additional $500 million in government funding.
Despite the need for funding, Hickenlooper gave an optimistic five-year time frame. However, concerns among residents regarding the infrastructure needed to carry the water into the systems of the largely small rural water systems still persist.
DOJ Probe Finds Alabama Ignored Sewer Issues in Impoverished Communities
The U.S. Department of Justice said its environmental justice probe found Alabama engaged in a pattern of inaction and neglect regarding the risks of raw sewage for residents in an impoverished Alabama county and announced a settlement agreement with the state.
The federal departments of Justice and Health and Human Services announced the results of the environmental justice probe and a settlement agreement with state health officials to address longstanding wastewater sanitation problems in Lowndes County, a high-poverty county between Selma and Montgomery.
The agreement is the result of the department’s first environmental justice investigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said it will not be the last, because the “fight for environmental justice is an urgent one” and the effects of climate crisis have exacerbated the health risks faced by marginalized communities.
“For generations, Black rural residents of Lowndes County have lacked access to basic sanitation services. And as a result, these residents have been exposed to raw sewage in their neighborhoods, their yards, their playgrounds, schools and even inside their own homes,” Clarke said.
The Department of Justice did not accuse the state of violating federal civil rights law, but it said it found two areas of concern: The potential use of fines to punish people with inadequate home systems and what it called inadequate action to assess and address the potential health risks from raw sewage.
The Alabama Department of Public Health agreed to a number of changes, including the creation of a comprehensive plan for the region, and a moratorium on fines. The federal department agreed to suspend their investigation as long as the state complies with the settlement terms.
Pittsburgh Water Rates Could Increase Nearly 60% over Next 3 Years
The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA) has asked Pennsylvania’s Public Utilities Commission for a staged rate increase of nearly 60% by 2026, but that watchdog agency has been known to approve smaller rate increases than requested.
Under PWSA’s proposal, a typical monthly residential payment would increase by about 20% (from $86.43 to $103.41) in 2024, roughly 20% to $123.55 in 2025, and by 18% in 2026 to $146.12. Finding out what the real rate rise will be will probably take more than a year.
Such files are normally suspended by the Pennsylvania PUC, which opens an inquiry and gathers input from customers and others before deciding and sometimes approving rates lower than requested, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The most recent rate increase for PWSA was 33% less than what the firm had first planned and took effect in January 2022 with a further rise in 2023. The PWSA in 2022 implemented a new stormwater tax that is calculated depending on the area of paved surfaces on a property.
In the current request, PWSA also suggested giving homeowners who have rain barrels a $40 one-time credit.
Federally Appointed Water Manager to Take Over Jackson’s Sewer System
The federal appointee now managing the water system in Mississippi’s capital city appears set to take over the city’s sewer system, too.
U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate said at a May hearing that he planned to place Jackson’s sewer system under the authority of Ted Henifin, who was appointed in November to address the city’s water troubles. The water system partially failed in August, and for days people had to wait in line for water to drink, bathe, cook and flush toilets.
The sewer system has also been beset by problems for years. The city agreed to enter a consent decree in 2012 with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to prevent the overflow of raw sewage and bring the city into compliance with the Clean Water Act. Reports required by the consent decree showed that 4.7 billion gallons of untreated or partially treated wastewater were dumped into the Pearl River between March 2020 and February 2022.
“Every day that goes by, we run the risk of escalating our problem,” Wingate said at the hearing.
The federal judge ordered attorneys to write an order that would combine the city’s sewer consent decree with its federal order that resulted in Henifin’s appointment, WLBT-TV reported.
Henifin said if he were to manage the sewer system, he would contract out most of the repair work, just as he does with the water system.
“I don’t have time to train staff, buy equipment,” Henifin said. “This is the best we can do to make this happen fast.”
Manhole Camera Market to Top $640 million by 2033
The manhole camera market industry is expected to grow at a 5.7 percent compound annual rate from $368.45 million in 2023 to $641.39 million by 2033, according to a recently published analysis by Fact.MR.
Rising commercial and industrial development, rapid urbanization, and increasing government investments in infrastructure development projects are all driving market growth for manhole cameras. Future market expansion is anticipated to be supported by factors such as a greater availability of rental equipment and a trend of contractual machinery and equipment.
With only a few manhole camera manufacturers vying for market share, the manhole camera market was a rather specialized one. The manhole camera demand for effective infrastructure maintenance has increased. Consequently, this has resulted in a continuous rise in the market and the entrance of new manhole camera manufacturers.
The manhole camera market in North America is predicted to experience considerable growth due to factors such as tight hygiene regulations and high sanitation standards in nations like the United States and Canada.
Bill to Set Aside Billions for Water System Upgrades Sails through Texas House
A bill that was approved by the Texas House by a vote of 136-8 would establish a new fund to kickstart significant water supply projects and repair deteriorating water infrastructure around the state, The Texas Tribune reported.
According to early draft budgets from the House and the Senate, the fund might get between $1 billion and $3 billion to start with.
The Texas Water Development Board, the state agency for water that frequently serves as a large bank for financing water projects, could use the special Texas Water Fund created by Senate Bill 28, which was passed by the Senate in early April, for water supply projects and improvements to current water infrastructure.
Additionally, it would establish the New Water Supply for Texas Fund, whose goal is to produce 7 million acre-feet of water in Texas over the following ten years, which is more than four times the capacity of Lake Livingston, one of the state’s biggest reservoirs.
The House legislation would restrict the use of funds from the New Water Supply for Texas Fund to a select number of initiatives, such as supporting brackish and marine water desalination facilities and importing water from other states. In order to align with the Senate version, the House bill will need to add aquifer storage, potable reuse projects and water loss mitigation projects to that list.
But in a significant shift from prior water planning, those projects would not be required to be included in Texas’ statewide water supply plan, which predicts and plans for the state’s water demands over a 50-year time horizon.
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