News

Gloucester's water, sewer bills once again highest in nation

By Richard Gaines
Staff writer
Published: April 23, 2008

Once again, Gloucester has earned the dubious distinction of having the highest combined water and sewer bills of any city in the state or for that matter, the nation, according to a report by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.

The median combined bill in Gloucester for fiscal 2007 — with water charged at $7.02 per 1,000 gallons used and sewer charged at $7.39 — was $1,692 a year.

A bill of that magnitude was 58 percent higher than the average bill in the 56 communities that make up the MWRA, which receive state subsidies that are denied to Gloucester by the law governing rate relief.

These figures drastically understate the differential between Gloucester's rates and those of any other city in America. Gloucester increased its rates by 30 percent for the current fiscal year, fiscal 2008, while none of the other highest rate-paying cities rate increases of more than 10 percent.

Seattle, for example, which has ranked just behind Gloucester for a number of years, increased its rate in fiscal 2007 by only 7.3 percent. Seattle's combined rates now add up to $1,300 average bill, leaving it 13 percent behind Gloucester's faster climbing rates.

In Massachusetts, communities having rates closest to Gloucester's were the bedroom towns of Hingham and Belmont whose residents on average paid more than $200 less than Gloucester ratepayers. The rates in both those towns have nearly stabilized now that the MWRA's mandated work is virtually finished.

The MWRA was created in the 1980s to share the cost and benefits of cleaning up the plumbing systems of the communities in metropolitan Boston and to clean up Boston Harbor itself. With the capital city at its center, the MWRA has always exerted political muscle on Beacon Hill.

The future for Gloucester's ratepayers is actually bleaker than the numbers suggest, and hint at the enormous additional price to be paid for the pleasure of living in Gloucester. The geology and geography of Cape Ann are driving forces in the infrastructure costs.

The impervious granite base on which the community was built and the sea water that borders the community on all sides has imposed enormous costs to lay and modernize public plumbing to avoid polluting the waters.

With Gloucester facing a combination of federal infrastructure mandates that will cost the city more than $150 million over the next 10 years to build new water treatment plants, replace much of the piping, complete a retrofitting and expansion of the sewer treatment plant and complete the separation of storm drains and sewer mains under the downtown streets, Mayor Carolyn Kirk yesterday resumed talks with the federal environmental enforcers aimed at getting them to rethink some of the mandates.

Kirk announced earlier this spring that various agencies had agreed to consider modifying the various consent decrees and court orders that have placed the city on a ramp leading to a level of water and sewer rates that are unprecedented in the United States.

Kirk spent a good deal of time during her State of the City report emphasizing the burden caused by the multiple mandates to improve the water and sewer systems.

The fiscal 2008 rates, which combine to compel the nation's highest fees for services, are projected to be 75 percent higher in five years, as the city nears the end of the combined sewer overflow project if it remains on existing timetables.

Calling it "project shock," Kirk's said the mandated projects — including $30 million to $50 million to add secondary or biological cleaning of wastewater, a mandate that has been promised but not yet issued — are "stacking up" and when combined with other urgent local projects, "cannot be paid for by the ratepayers alone."

She also warned that "catastrophic failure of any of the (water and sewer) systems could cripple the city," and that "paying for them could very well bankrupt its citizens."

Kirk said she wanted the enforcers to confirm that the investment will not be wasted by the coming work to expand the plant to put the wastewater through secondary treatment. No other city in the region has been allowed to remain with only primary, or chemical, treatment.

Kirk also said she would press the enforcers to rewrite the combined sewer overflow project, adding work that was not required in and around Harbor Cove and possibly eliminating some closer to the Head of the Harbor.

She said it made sense to first do the work around Harbor Cove, which has been targeted to lead the harbor revitalization. The former Birdseye property is being considered for a Marriott hotel and Kirk said she wanted the infrastructure done quickly to facilitate the city's economic development.

Council President Bruce Tobey, who delivered the MWRA report to Kirk, described her as doing "God's work to rationalize the schedules" with the mandate writers and enforcers.

He also said the city must bring the congressional and legislative delegations into a "partnership" to attack the infrastructure problems building on Gloucester's to-do list.

Tobey said the agencies making the mandates do not factor "cost-effectiveness" into their thinking.

Kirk said she would cite the improvements brought about by the city's work on mandates to clean up the harbor, which "has never been cleaner," but Kirk said she needed also to be "relentless" in seeking reasonable and flexible timetables.

Richard Gaines may be contacted at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.