01:00 AM

EST on Sunday, February 15, 2009
By Benjamin N. Gedan

Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE –– The photo-etching machines, running 10 hours a day at Precision Etchings and Findings, must be kept at 130 degrees. That means thousands of gallons of water must constantly course through a network of titanium cooling coils.

In 2001, desperate to control expenses to survive in a region unkind to manufacturers, the Warwick jewelry maker spent $25,000 for a chiller that cleans and cools 250 gallons of water at a time. The annual $18,000 bills for water usage and disposal dropped by half.

“We were using water like it was going out of style,” Ronald J. Boccanfuso, a founder of the 24-year-old company, said. “We had to start conserving water and save every penny.”

At the time, the changes at Precision Etchings were welcomed by the local wastewater treatment plant, where industrial clients are rewarded for cutting usage with lower rates and fees. But that was before the deepening recession made water conservation suddenly in vogue, drying up the lucrative streams of sludge that keep sewage plants afloat.

Across the country, wastewater plants are seeing steep declines in revenue as homeowners shut the faucets while they brush their teeth and businesses seek to cut utility costs. The reduced volumes could force unpopular rate increases and scuttle plans for improvements necessary to protect rivers and bays.

In a recent national poll of sewage plants, nearly one-third of respondents reported decreased usage, and 70 percent said they had delayed projects.

“We are concerned that if this investment is not made, water quality is going to start going backwards,” said Susan Bruninga, a spokeswoman for National Association of Clean Water Agencies, in Washington, D.C.

Like energy utilities, sewage plants have long encouraged responsible use, although wasteful behavior is better for sales. But low-flow toilets are not the only factor fouling sewer plant budgets.

As real-estate prices collapsed and economic activity froze last year, the wastewater industry smelled trouble. Sure enough, at first gradually and then with alarming speed, homebuilders stopped building homes and foreclosures evicted paying customers, who rarely packed unpaid sewer bills with their belongings.
Soon, plunging consumer spending led businesses to cut production or shutter plans entirely, sharply reducing water use. Survivors installed in-house mesh filters and sophisticated resin columns to recycle water.

The Warwick Wastewater Treatment Facility signed up only 26 new users last December, compared with 115 in December 2006. Overall, it added only 525 accounts last year, a 49-percent drop from 2007.

The growth in users, although modest, was expected to boost inflows. But the microorganisms in the plant’s treatment tanks are not exactly feasting. In the fourth quarter of last year, average usage dropped to 312 gallons a day per customer, down from 322 gallons the year before. “We didn’t expect this,” Janine L. Burke, the plant’s executive director, said.

The Narragansett Bay Commission treats 64 million gallons of murky water a day at plants in Providence and East Providence, making it by far the largest wastewater agency in Rhode Island. It, too, has seen new business slow and cash-strapped users start counting every drop in every drain.
Last year, the commission opened 386 new connections, compared with 466 in 2007. Overall activity among its 360,000 residential users and 8,000 business clients slowed by 5 percent.

“We’re falling short on revenue projections,” spokeswoman Jamie Samons said. “Places go out of business, people move out of homes.”

The national housing crisis has also hurt water providers. The Kent County Water Authority, which sells water in Coventry, East Greenwich, West Warwick and other towns, typically shuts off service to 500 users a month who owe at least $25 for more than 70 days. Last week, it sent shutoff notices to 1,500 customers.

At the start of this month, the agency was owed $1.2 million in delinquent payments, more than three times the average level. “It’s just a tough time right now,” Timothy J. Brown, the longtime general manager, said. “No one is home when we go to knock on the door. It’s empty.”

The struggles of sewage plants, however, are potentially more worrisome, given their gatekeeping role in helping rivers and bays stay clean enough for swimming, fishing and marine life.

In recent decades, a growing awareness of the aquatic havoc wrought by poorly treated effluent has led to stricter regulations and billions of dollars in upgrades at sewage plants.

But even as laws have tightened, federal and state support have dipped far below the levels during the years after the Clean Water Act passed in 1977. That has put more pressure on user fees, a highly stressed revenue source in this new era of rationing.

“The water quality treatment standards have been getting more stringent,” Erin Mosley, president of the New England Water Environment Association, said. “That is very stressful on the operators and managers.”

In Rhode Island, worsening balance sheets at wastewater plants could also mean less access to some of the loans provided by the state’s Clean Water Finance Agency, according to accounting manager Michael P. Larocque. “It’s got to be causing them some grief,” he said. “It could put them in a position where they need to borrow more money and they don’t have the revenues.”

Advocates in Massachusetts are warning of a “serious economic and environmental crisis” from wastewater funding shortfalls. And in its most recent “report card,” the American Society of Civil Engineers awarded a D- to the country’s wastewater infrastructure.

“They cannot take a year or two off from spending,” John Torgan, baykeeper for the Rhode Island advocacy group Save The Bay, said. “If you wait, you could be faced with catastrophic failure. It threatens public health and it threatens the environment.”

Some see salvation in the massive federal economic stimulus plan. The National Association of Clean Water Agencies has been lobbying for $10 billion in projects, including upgrades in Providence. (Governor Carcieri has collected requests from local sewage plants, but state officials have not released the estimated $500 million in proposals.)
Even before the recession, the association was projecting a $500-billion shortfall in funds for wastewater infrastructure over the next 20 years.

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management has been pressuring sewage plants to spend millions on a variety of upgrades. Plans in East Providence and Cranston have been drawn up to reduce the amount of nitrogen discharged into the Upper Bay; Warwick hopes to install miles of new sewer lines; and Bristol and Middletown are struggling to keep rainwater out of aging sewer systems.

All over the state, pipes and pump stations need replacing and new lines are called for to connect neighborhoods to municipal sewers. One-third of the state still relies on home septic systems, moistening backyard soil with effluent after minimal treatment, according to Angelo S. Liberti, chief of surface water protection for the DEM.

The federal stimulus package could ultimately help pay for much of those needs. But for now, with vacancy rates increasing and homeowners calculating the cost of every flush, many wastewater authorities have few options other than raising rates.

Just last month, the sewage authority in Providence asked the state Public Utilities Commission for a 13-percent rate hike.

“We don’t have the luxury to delay infrastructure projects,” Samons, the spokeswoman, said, “so we raise sewer fees.”

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