Pipe Dream

By Chip Young

CSO project results should even outstrip the hype

It is a bit hard to say that a $350 million, multi-year project known as “Rhode Island’s Big Dig” and the subject of recent media attention from everyone from national TV to high school newspapers may be understated, but that’s my belief about the Narragansett Bay Commission Combined Sewer Overflow Abatement Project; hitherto called the CSO project.

True, there’s nothing like a photo of a rock drill big enough to use on Maria Shriver’s choppers, sand hogs working in underground in lighted tunnels like something out of a gargantuan, futuristic Coal Miner’s Daughter movie set, and enough enormous pipes to rival the Large Hadron Collider to get people’s attention.  But in a couple of years, the focus is going to be off the might and majesty of the CSO, and zoomed down to the marked signs of health exhibited by the wee, wet beasties like clams and other marine life in Narragansett Bay, and this combined impact on the people who enjoy the state’s most important environmental and economic natural resource.

Veteran quahoggers I have frequent dealings with like Mike McGiveney and Jody King, the president and veep, respectively, of the R.I. Shellfishermen’s Association get about as excited as I have ever seen them when they talk about what the potential benefits of the CSO project will mean for them and their bull-raking colleagues.  They have been at the dirty end of the stick for years, when any rainfall over a half-inch has shut down portions of Upper Narragansett Bay due to the raw, untreated pollution (we don’t need crude descriptors here, I think you know what we’re talking about) discharged from the old CSO runoff system that can’t handle the excess overflow.  That reduces the available areas left for quahoggers to work, and increases the stress on the stock in those available areas.  And when big storms come along and the Bay is closed even further south, shellfishermen are forced to either head much further down the Bay (as the ka-ching of gas costs rings in their ears) or just stay home.

The CSO project tunnels and holding tanks will prevent untreated sewage from running straight into the bay, and contain it until the flow to the NBC wastewater plant is reduced.  The excess sewage can then be sent to the plant, where it can receive the necessary treatment to not have such harmful affect on the marine life in the Bay. And that impact won’t be felt just in the Field’s Point area in Providence, but throughout the metro region where people who enjoy the beaches in Warren, Bristol and Warwick also feel the impact of CSO overflows along with the quahoggers.

The results may be incremental at first, but as time goes on in upcoming years, expect to see fewer shellfishing and beach closures, an attendant rise in the overall health of Narragansett Bay, and a damn sight more pleasant environment for all those who live around it or play on it.  And this is just Phase I of the project.  Phases II and III will branch out along the Seekonk and Woonasquatucket Rivers, and then into Central Falls and Pawtucket.  In the end, NBC officials estimate that by full completion of the CSO project, the 2.2 billion gallons of sewage that currently enter the CSO system will be reduced by 98 percent.

Now, maybe I was wrong.  No one can call that an understatement.

The teeth of the main drill’s enormous cutting wheel can be seen below. Watch your fingers.