Cover Story: Cut the crap

A careless construction worker probably dumped the paint can that created the bottleneck beneath Crane Road. It worked its way into a 15-inch sewer pipe under the residential street off Lenox Road in Buckhead, and lodged in a vulnerable spot along the old concrete line.

City workers came out Jan. 30 to figure out why the pipe was clogged. But the line caved in while they were trying to reach the can.

What followed was to raw sewage what fireworks are to the Fourth of July. Fountains of effluent shot-gunned into the street. Human waste broke in waves toward both curbs. And for 48 hours, putrid wastewater poured down a concrete ditch that empties into Indian Creek, 50 feet away.

The Crane Road collapse was just one more spot where the flash of Atlanta’s surface met the flush of the city’s decrepit underground. Atlanta’s sanitary sewers — the lines that are supposed to transport human waste to treatment plants — cave in three or four times a year. They spring an average of one leak a day. And a separate system of antiquated combined sewers overflows around 60 times a year.

All told, Atlanta’s sewer woes amount to the biggest public works crisis since Sherman left town. It probably will take 15 years of concerted effort and at least $3 billion to fix, which could mean sewer rates that triple by 2007. And it certainly will take leadership on the issue from the city’s next mayor.

The scary thing is that the two leading mayoral candidates this year seem as eager to avoid talking about sewers as their predecessors have been to push for hard solutions. That could make it more difficult for the next mayor to sell costly sewer projects to voters and the City Council. And a failure to finally settle on some solutions could, in turn, create even bigger problems for the city.

Shirley Franklin, the leading money raiser in the mayor’s race, admits she hasn’t even been fully briefed on the issue.

“What I know is what I’ve heard discussed at the forums,” Franklin says.

Her leading opponent isn’t much more eager to talk effluent. City Council President Robb Pitts is a 24-year veteran of the council. When asked what Pitts has done to solve Atlanta’s sewer woes, his spokesman fails to point to anything.

Gloria Bromell-Tinubu — who’s running a distant third in polls and fund raising — can at least take credit for raising the issue in forums and interviews. But city sewer experts argue that the position she favors actually could delay the solution.

Granted, sewers aren’t a sexy issue. But there are people who have watched the leaks and overflows for more than 20 years, and who can count all the way up to $3 billion. They know what the issue means, and they’re anxious to see the politicians address it.

“There’s not an issue more important to the city,” says Joe Beasley, regional director for the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. “And if the candidates cannot comment on it, if they’re ignorant to the issue, they shouldn’t be in office.”

Theoretically at least the 1972 Federal Clean Water Act was supposed to solve all the problems. It mandated that streams be clean enough to fish and swim in by 1983, a date never met by Atlanta nor by a host of other cities.

But other cities did make significant progress. In the mid-1970s, the EPA operated a grant program to help municipalities comply with the Clean Water Act.

“They were giving out money to anyone who wanted to build sewer plants,” says Neill Herring, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club and the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. Atlanta didn’t take advantage, and in the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan converted the grant program to loans.

During the same decade, Mayor Andrew Young’s administration received waivers from the federal government to allow sewer overflows every time it rained. Atlanta needed them. The waivers put little pressure on the Young administration to stop polluting.

“Why get money if you don’t have to obey the law?” Herring asks.

Atlanta did complete the $168 million Three Rivers Water Quality Management Program during the Young administration. It was then the largest capital improvement project in the city’s history, and it partially cleaned up the South River, which at one point, could barely sustain even hardy life forms. Like so many “solutions” in the history of Atlanta’s sewers, however, even the upside turns out down: Many now see the South River project as a pitifully small thumb in a large, leaky dike. After all, the river is still plenty polluted, and part of the project simply involved shifting waste from the South River basin into the Chattahoochee.

Herring and other environmentalists argue that Young allowed developers to do whatever they wanted without concern for the city’s infrastructure.

One example: Herring says City Hall granted construction permits to a Ponce de Leon Avenue apartment complex knowing the Butler Street trunk line connected to the complex was overloaded. Once residents moved in, toilets on the second floor in the apartment complex were “squirting back,” Herring recalls.

By 1990, downstream residents were so fed up with Atlanta’s sewage that they rammed a series of bills through the General Assembly mandating the city clean up its combined-sewer overflows. Combined sewers transport wastewater and stormwater in one pipe, and Atlanta’s system often becomes overwhelmed by heavy rains. When it does, waste is released from the pipes into creeks and rivers.

Columbus, which also was affected by the combined-sewer overflow bill, finagled a $20 million federal appropriation to create a “beyond the state-of-the-art” water treatment system. The appropriation saved Columbus taxpayers $10 million on a $95 million project, says Billy Turner, president of the Columbus Water Works.

Atlanta never got its combined-sewer act together enough to make a serious go at large federal grants or innovative projects. Instead, the city spent hundreds of millions of dollars to construct six treatment centers that strain solids out of the wastewater, before spraying the water with chlorine and releasing it into streams. From the beginning, the plan was criticized; environmentalists argued that the technology was inadequate to help Atlanta meet clean water standards.

In 1997, with much fanfare, Mayor Bill Campbell opened the mini-treatment plants. Last September, the EPA sent a letter to the city saying the plants continue to pump unacceptable levels of raw sewage into streams — which means, in effect, that the city will have to spend massive amounts on an entirely new project.

While the state CSO law didn’t move Atlanta toward a real sewer solution, it did create a heated fight in the mid-1990s that’s spilled over to this millennium.

As part of a $1 billion plan to alleviate the city’s combined-sewer problems, engineers intended to bore 100 feet below Atlanta’s streets to build an eight-mile tunnel connecting two treatment plants. The tunnel would have stored more than a billion gallons of wastewater whenever the city experienced a downpour. That way, the theory goes, the combined sewers wouldn’t be overwhelmed by rain, and the overflow sites wouldn’t gush waste into city streams as they do about 60 times every year. After each storm, the tunnel gradually would release water to the treatment plants.

The plan for the project was in place by 1990. But Mayor Maynard Jackson didn’t push the issue, and the city didn’t float bonds for it until 1993.

By that time, a movement against the tunnel was brewing. Neighborhood activists worried the tunnel would leak and wouldn’t be able to handle the overflows. Civil rights activists charged environmental racism because the tunnels would have transported waste from the majority-white northside of the city to the majority-black southside.

Campbell, who supported the project, had been in office just three months when tunnel opponents pushed a bill barring the project onto the City Council floor. His voice wasn’t strong enough to convince the council to go along with the project. Jackson’s voice, had he chosen to use it, might have been just that strong. The council voted 12-6 to kill the tunnel.

Atlanta now labors under two federal consent decrees that oblige the city to repair its 300-plus miles of combined-sewer system by 2007, and to fix the much larger sanitary sewer problem by 2014. The consent decrees also cost taxpayers a steady stream of cash in the form of fines. For the CSO violations alone, the city agreed to pay $4.1 million, as well as to spend $27 million on other improvements, including the purchase of greenways along tributaries of the Chattahoochee.

While the combined sewers get the press, Atlanta’s 2,100 miles of sanitary sewers actually average about one overflow a day (versus a little more than about one a week for the combined sewers), says the EPA’s Scott Gordon.

In February, City Council actually blocked new sewer hookups in the Pine Hills area of Buckhead, where the Crane Road incident occurred, because sewer backups kept flooding streets, yards and occasionally, basements with waste. Under the terms of the consent decrees, Atlanta can be fined up to $1,500 for each new sewage spill — combined or sanitary. During one recent series of overflows, the city walked away with $150,000 in penalties. The spill on Crane Road combined with a second, larger spill stuck Atlanta with a $45,000 fine under an EPA zero tolerance initiative.

As much money as the city is getting fined, and it’s a lot, it looks like piggy bank savings compared to the cost of actually fixing the system. To fix the sanitary sewers, the city first must probe the pipes with video cameras and test for structural damage. Once the problems are identified, workers will seal or replace the broken lines.

Under terms of the combined-sewer consent decree, the city in April submitted three repair plans to the EPA. The option the city prefers revives the tunnel idea. It calls for building a 20-mile-long deep tunnel system to transport and store wastewater from the neighborhoods served by combined sewers. The plan would separate — meaning carry sewage in one pipe and stormwater in a second pipe — one-fourth of the city’s combined-sewer system by 2007, with total separation in 14-16 years. The EPA expects to issue recommendations regarding the plans this week.

Atlanta Deputy Public Works Commissioner David Peters says it’s going to cost the city $1.1 billion to repair the combined-sewer system and $1.3 billion to fix up the sanitary sewers. Add to that incidentals like permits and a $70 million bio-solid recycling project, Peters says, and the total bill could come in at around $3 billion.

The operative word there is “could.” Design work on the CSO is only 20 percent complete. Work to assess the condition of the sanitary sewers hasn’t begun in earnest.

“It’s plus or minus $1 billion,” Peters says. “Until the designs are done ... we can’t get hard numbers.”

Given the history of Atlanta’s sewer woes and the typical cost overruns for construction projects of such magnitude, it’s not a stretch to bet that the billion will wind up in the plus column.

Sewers would seem, then, to be an issue worthy of strong consideration in the upcoming mayor’s race. But you wouldn’t get that idea by listening to the leading candidates.

In forums attended by CL, “sewers” get mouthed along with “water,” “air” and “public transportation” as an obligatory touchstone when the candidates are asked about cleaning up the environment. The discussions involve few specifics, and audience members rarely have asked for details.

Clark Atlanta University political scientist William Boone, who keeps scrupulous notes on what the candidates are saying, sees the same trend in forums he’s attended. Bromell-Tinubu has responded most directly to the sewer issue, Boone says, but “it’s not something the candidates raised on their own.”

The campaign is focused on other issues. What you hear at the debates and see in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution are questions about integrity, public transportation, affordable housing and gentrification.

In her campaign’s most-prominent citywide mailing, Franklin emphasized integrity over and over. Sewers didn’t make the cut.

Bromell-Tinubu’s website mentions environmentally safe development in her statement of beliefs, but when asked, she does seem excited to talk about the problem.

“Oh, cool,” she says when the topic comes up. “It’s the most important issue we’re not talking about.”

It’s not clear, however, whether Bromell-Tinubu’s way of dealing with the problem solves it or drags it out. On the combined-sewer issue, she sides with tunnel opponents, who say the city’s fix-it plan for the system might not work. Bromell-Tinubu voted against the tunnel option when it came before council in 1994. It would be better, she says, to separate the entire system and pay a little more now in the form of higher construction costs.

That viewpoint comes under fire from city officials and City Councilwoman Clair Muller who argue that the city’s plan would accomplish the same goals more quickly and less expensively. Muller says proponents of accelerating separation of the entire system would subject the city to more fines, because it couldn’t be done by the 2007 deadline.

Bromell-Tinubu, like the other candidates, knows less about the sanitary sewer problem, its scope and how much solving it would cost.

Pitts took the opposite stand from Bromell-Tinubu on the tunnel project in 1994. He now supports the CSO plan the city prefers. He also acknowledges that ratepayers will have to pay for some of the upgrades. Beyond that, Pitts spokesman Dana Bolden says, “There’s really not a lot to point to” when it comes to the council president’s record on sewer reform. That’s not too good for a guy who’s been in office for 24 years. But as a perpetual outsider with Atlanta’s power structure and a council member with little real political power, Pitts does have an excuse.

Franklin admits she hasn’t been fully briefed about the city’s sewer problems. That’s frightening for an issue of this magnitude. Franklin has a general idea about how much repairs will cost. She also says she would audit the current plans to find out if there are places where the city could save money and time — a risky idea for a problem already experiencing a time crunch.

“I don’t have confidence that a thorough investigation has been done,” she says.

The dearth of details is rather surprising considering Franklin’s background and her purported strengths as a candidate. She owns her own environmental consulting firm, which specializes in water and wastewater issues. Her supporters also credit her with essentially running Atlanta as city manager under Young.

Franklin claims the Young administration made upgrades and increased water and sewer rates to modernize Atlanta’s pipe highways. But if she takes partial credit for the good, she also must take some blame for the bad, including Young’s “rain waivers,” the shortcomings of the South River cleanup and the general perception that his administration never met a developer it didn’t like.

Remember that apartment complex with the sewer back-ups on Ponce de Leon Avenue? Her campaign headquarters are just down the street. Franklin says the complex was a “pioneer” for the intown development that helped revive the inner city. But the complex’s construction also jibed with the Young administration’s development-first mentality.

It wouldn’t be fair to blame the candidates entirely for failing to bring up the sewer issue. How many people seeking office get elected promising to increase your bills? Just ask Walter Mondale.

The candidates at least seemed to have read the AJC coverage of the fight over combined sewers. But unlike the early 1990s, when the daily paper championed the Chattahoochee’s cleanup by keeping the issue in the headlines, it’s now tucked combined-sewer issues into the Metro section, and it’s barely covered the sanitary sewer problems.

Without media attention, the public can’t be expected to ask complex questions and hold the politicians accountable.

All the candidates say the city should search for federal and state dollars and look for help from the counties that surround Atlanta. But local governments hardly seem the money tree for Atlanta’s sewer projects, and the federal government isn’t exactly ripe with urban infrastructure grants either.

There is a $750-million federal loan program set up to help cities across the country with infrastructure problems like Atlanta’s. The city could take advantage of that, but it would be one city in a long line of municipalities looking for loan money, Gordon notes.

Those loans also carry a 3 percent interest rate, and because of the administrative expense, the loans would be about as cost-effective as a bond the city could issue on its own, says George Dusenbury, an aide to U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta.

The city also has lobbied Lewis and U.S. Sen. Max Cleland for a series of $80 million-$100 million loans at a 1 percent interest rate. There is precedent for such loans, Dusenbury says. But one has to wonder whether the Bush administration is going to be fired up to give hundreds of millions of dollars to a solidly Democratic city during an economic downturn. Peters says Atlanta also will lobby heads of congressional committees who might be able to lay their hands on federal transportation dollars to help with the sewer woes.

Of course, the federal money is still just speculation and so far, there’s no money lined up to pay for the sewer repairs. The buck, for now, stops with Atlanta’s 120,000 sewer ratepayers, about 80,000 of whom are residential.

To get an idea of how much of a sewer rate hike is in store if money isn’t found, take a $300 million-$500 million revenue bond currently in the works that would allow the city to begin work on the sewer upgrades. That bond alone will cost users an extra $10-$12 per month if passed, Peters says. Atlanta’s sewer problems are about 10 times that expensive.

In fact, the billion-dollar sewer plan in the mid-1990s that included the deep tunnels would have carried a rate hike for Atlanta residents of an extra $105 per month, according to an internal city memo at the time.

The prospect of a $100 per month rate hike frightens people who work with the city’s less affluent. If the city fails to find federal funding, “it’s going to drive poor people out of the Atlanta,” says Beasley, of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

He thinks City Hall should figure out a way to put to most of the burden on commercial users, so it doesn’t “fall on the backs of poor people.” He says civil rights groups like his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Council and the NAACP are beginning to look at the issue.

If candidates don’t address the burden that skyrocketing sewer bills will place on the poor, Beasley says groups like his will organize to vote them out: “It should be a make or break kind of issue.”

Kevin Green, vice president of environmental affairs at the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, says his briefings with city officials indicate bills won’t rise by $100. The current bimonthly Atlanta water and sewer bill is about $46 per month and would rise to $121 by 2007, if the city didn’t find federal money to pay for the projects, Green says city officials have told him.

Worrying about $75 or $100 a month rate hikes, even though the EPA hasn’t yet signed off on city plans, isn’t paranoia. After all, Atlanta’s track record attracting federal dollars to fix its sewer problems isn’t the best.

The candidates all say they would explore the possibility of shifting more of the burden of the rate increase to commercial users. But shifting the bill from residents to businesses doesn’t sit well with folks like Green and the Chamber, and punishing the drivers of the city’s economic engines might discourage development and slow down the economy.

To mitigate the astronomical cost to consumers, Green says other ideas, like impact fees for developers and franchise fees that would allow companies to run fiber-optic cables along sewer lines also are being considered.

The upshot of all this is that getting the sewer repairs made will take nothing short of an expert sales job by the next mayor. That sales job might help squeeze a little money out of federal and commercial sources.

Job No. 1, however, will be selling rate increases to Atlanta residents and City Council. If the city decided to pay for some of the work with a general bond, residents would have to vote on a bond referendum.

If the city floated sewer bonds to pay for the work, the council would have to vote for a rate increase. There will be opposition to a hike, and as the 1994 tunnel battle and the recent redistricting fight proved, the council often crumbles under public pressure.

But like any good salesman will tell you, you have to know your product if you want to sell it. If Atlanta’s mayoral hopefuls don’t start learning about the entire scope of the city’s sewer problems, they’ll have a hard time selling solutions. And if they don’t tell voters about the issue now — what they think should be done — when they’re elected, they’ll enter office without a mandate to take to the people.

“Everyone’s quick to say sewers aren’t glamorous,” Herring says, but with the dollar figures being thrown around “it might become glamorous.”

Kevin.griffis@creativeloafing.com??