Why Woonsocket’s sewage treatment plant can’t afford to fail

You smell it before you see it: a faint sour tinge to the breeze blowing out from the Woonsocket Wastewater Treatment Facility.

It’s hardly a full-frontal attack of stench, which is intentional. The brick buildings that house solidified sewage by-products are depressurized, with the air sucked up into a web of pipes infused with bleach to dilute the smell – and remove potentially corrosive gasses– before sending it skyward through a chimney-like funnel. 

“I’ve yet to really notice [the smell] being really bad,” said Terence Bain, plant manager for Synagro Technologies, the private contractor which operates the incineration side of the city-owned sewage plant. “It’s not like I come home stinking.”

But it was the smell that alerted a nearby jogger to the presence of partially untreated sewage dumped from the plant into the Blackstone River in early March. The jogger’s resulting Twitter post set off a cascade of investigations about sewage plant operations, culminating in a lawsuit by the Rhode Island Attorney General and state Department of Environmental Management against the city, Synagro and the sewage treatment operator, Jacobs Engineering.

The complaint is still winding its way through the early stages of the legal process since being filed in Providence County Superior Court on March 16. But in contrast to the slow pace of court proceedings, the city and its contractors have moved quickly to fix the most urgent problems so they can keep their permit from DEM.

Months later, the state has eased off the once-daily bacteria testing reports and onsite inspections, back to the regular check-ins every two or three months, said Joe Haberek, surface water protection administrator for DEM.

“They were able to demonstrate they had maintained compliance for an extended period of time,” Haberek said in an interview on May 25. A few of the daily testing reports showed “slightly elevated” bacteria levels, but nothing that warranted further action, he said. 

Gravity thickener out of commission for now

Meanwhile, the gravity thickener at the center of the alleged environmental violations sits empty, out of commission for what the city public works director expects to be a year until new parts are installed. Next to the towering, broken behemoth, a white tent surrounds the temporary gravity belt thickener that will act as a workaround solution to separate liquid from solid sludge. 

The Woonsocket City Council in April begrudgingly approved a $1.7 million emergency contract with Synagro to truck in the rental equipment and pay for extra people to run the machinery for the next year. DEM signed off on the rental equipment’s use on May 25, subject to a few conditions around odor control, according to documents shared with Rhode Island Current.

Jon Pratt, city engineer, hoped to start using the temporary equipment this week.

Before that, the plant has relied on stainless steel trailers, known as frac tanks, to hold the liquid sludge, which rely on gravity alone to help the solids to settle to the bottom. It’s not as efficient, nor as effective, as the gravity belt thickener, Pratt acknowledged.

And the plant demands both efficiency and effectiveness. For one thing, the environmental regulations are stringent. And the cities and towns whose sewage and dried waste are treated at the regional plant depend upon operations running smoothly. Shutting down, even temporarily, is not an option.

“If we stopped running, there would be sewage backing up into people’s toilets,” said Anthony Rose, assistant project manager for Jacobs.

Vital role in region

The initial city sewage system was built at the turn of the 19th century, with a series of upgrades over the next hundred years to build out the operations, according to the city website. The city started outsourcing to private contractors in the late 1980s, inking its first deal with New England Treatment Co., which was acquired by Synagro in 2000.

Jacobs, a Texas-based company, has run the sewage treatment arm of the plant since 2012, taking over for former contractor Veolia North America. The 13-person crew in Woonsocket, all unionized, oversee 24/7 operations of treatment for the 10 million gallons a day of waste taken in from Woonsocket, North Smithfield, and Bellingham and Blackstone, Massachusetts. 

Then there’s Synagro. The Baltimore-based company, which has 22 non-union workers in Woonsocket, oversees incineration of up to 105 tons of dried waste a day, about 10% of which comes from the Woonsocket plant itself, with the rest trucked in from 30 cities and towns across the region, according to Synagro’s website.  

Today, the regional operations provide a critical source of revenue to the city of 42,000 people, where nearly one in five residents fall below the federal poverty line, according to Census Bureau estimates. The city brings in $3 million in annual host fees from the two contractors plus a share of royalties from incineration up to $600,000 a year, according to contracts obtained by Rhode Island Current through a public records request. Woonsocket has its waste treated for free.

Dozens of trucks traverse the rutted road flanking the Blackstone River passing by local retailers and health care centers, hauling hundreds of thousands of gallons of sewage solids from across New England. The sprawling, fenced-in campus sits nestled between Route 104 and the Blackstone River, tucked behind the Woonsocket Fire Department headquarters and next to the city animal shelter.

Despite repeated complaints over smells, noise and pollution from nearby residents and environmental watchdogs over the years, the plant operators insist that their process is safe and effective.

“The water we’re discharging is much cleaner than the water in the river itself,” Rose said.

Except when it’s not. The lawsuit explains how sludge slowly built up in the equipment, which in turn could not be properly treated by the failing gravity thickener, leading to elevated levels of bacteria in the water dumped into the Blackstone River. Workers with Synagro and Jacobs declined to comment on the lawsuit, including specific improvements made since the complaint was filed.

Yet city officials have alluded to the fact that they might be looking to break their agreements with one or both companies. City Solicitor Michael Lepizzera told City Council members at an April 10 meeting that the city was “reserving the right to litigation.”

Public Works Director Steve D’Agostino also indicated the city may look to have Synagro cover the $1.7 million cost for the portable gravity belt thickener, telling council members in the same meeting that the city was only making the payment “for now.”

D’Agostino referred additional questions about potential legal action by the city against its contractors to Lepizzera, who did not return multiple calls for comment. 

Synagro employees also declined to comment on whether the company would shoulder the cost for the emergency equipment. Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt did not return calls for comment.

But D’Agostino was clear, the city – and the region – depend on the plant remaining functional. Shutting things down would have far graver consequences than even the operational problems the facility has already faced, he said.

At least one sign of progress: DEM hasn’t received any more odor complaints since the lawsuit, according to Haberek.