Infrastructure
Why is Infrastructure important for a livable Newport?
Through special forums and representation at City Council and other civic meetings, the Alliance for a Livable Newport strives to bring an objective view to the matter at hand so that residents can make informed decisions.
Clean air and water are basic to good health everywhere. However, for Newport, many of the key reasons people are attracted to visit and live here relate to our environment: clean water, air quality and adequate infrastructure for all the wonderful outdoor recreational activities and historic treasures Newport has to offer.
COMBINED SEWER OVERFLOW PROBLEM: UPDATE
The CSO problem in our harbor is still with us with 13 overflows through May.
The good news is that actual bacteria measurements [Enterococci] by the City and Clean Ocean Access continue to be favorable. King beach will reopen this month for the first time is three years. The bay swim will go off again.
The Thames and Wellington sewer interceptor lines, installed this winter, are in place and operating normally with minimum disruption to the traffic flow.
The new Ultraviolet treatment plant at Eastons beach is ready to kill bacteria arriving via the moat around the south pond. Middletown is making plans to move the esplanade pipe further south on the esplanade to reduce or even eliminate polluting storm water flows onto Atlantic beach.
Getting back to the CSO Control Plan, Newport has spent an estimated $60,000,000 to date [excludes interest] to reduce CSO’s to the EPA zero standard with no results except for the new sewer lines and connections themselves, a big improvement over the decayed ones they replaced. The city has yet to explain the lack of CSO reduction performance*. This should happen before any more big money is spent.
There’s a long way to go to solving the CSO problem to the EPA and the judicial consent decree standards. The City will eventually pay a fine for delays.
*ALN’s 27 June CSO forum will show that the continuing historic incidence of CSO’s since 2004 in rainfalls of > .5” or more remains just about the same [40-60%] at both the Wellington and Washington CSO pumping stations.
Article contributed by John McCain
