The High Cost of Deferred Maintenance

By Amy Sherman

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a port city nicknamed the "Venice of America," draws tourists for cruises, luxury beachside hotels, and upscale shops and restaurants. But on December 10, 2019 — prime tourist season — that image was tarnished as stinky wastewater from a sewer main break seeped into the streets of Rio Vista, one of the city's ritziest neighborhoods.

Over the next three weeks, the city endured six more main breaks. Nearly 127 million gallons of sewage spilled into waterways and streets. Local media outlets were dominated by headlines about workers in hazmat suits, dead fish in waterways, and residents renaming Ponce de Leon Drive "Poop de Leon."

These problems were no surprise. A 839-page consultant's report from 2017 outlined $1.4 billion in repairs needed over 20 years to Fort Lauderdale's water and sewer system, some of which dates back to the 1960s and 1970s. Now, after years of deferred maintenance, the city has to update the wastewater system to meet future demand, says City Manager Chris Lagerbloom.

For other cities with aging sewer infrastructure — a nationwide issue — the events in Fort Lauderdale are a cautionary tale.

December brought a series of sewer line breaks to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, flooding the Tarpon River and residential neighborhoods like Rio Vista, below, with millions of gallons of sewage. Photo 2019/Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinal/TCA.

Low grades, high costs

For more than two decades, U.S. wastewater systems have earned Ds on the American Society of Civil Engineers' Infrastructure Report Card. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, there are up to 75,000 sanitary sewer overflows per year, resulting in between three and 10 billion gallons of untreated wastewater seeping into waterways.

In 2016, an EPA survey estimated it would take $271 billion to maintain and improve the nation's wastewater systems — a total that does not include the improvements needed to guard against climate change and sea-level rise.

"Things that are out of sight to a certain degree are out of mind until something happens."
— Bill Spearman, President, American Public Works Association

It's largely up to local governments to foot the bill. The U.S. Conference of Mayors found that local governments pay for at least 95 percent of water and sewer utility infrastructure costs each year. In Florida, cities can obtain loans through the state, but investments in wastewater infrastructure are typically covered by ratepayers. Surveys by the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) have found that water and sewer rates have increased faster than the rate of inflation for more than 15 years.

Many communities are reaching the limits of affordability for lower-income households, says Kristina Surfus, government affairs managing director for NACWA.

Not an issue — until it is

Sewer main breaks are a widespread problem. A 2016 break in an 87-year-old sewer line caused a two-million-gallon sewage leak in Los Angeles. Last year, breaks in Kansas City spilled sewage into the Missouri River from nearly 100-year-old pipes, and in November in Queens, New York, sewage seeped into more than 100 homes after a pipe collapsed, the New York Times reported.

The EPA issued a guide in 2005 for sewer system operators to evaluate capacity, management, operation, and maintenance. With steps to investigate capacity and proactively prevent overflows, the guide's goal was to encourage a proactive approach to infrastructure improvements, says Bill Spearman, president of the American Public Works Association. But Congress never adopted the approach as mandatory.

Since this infrastructure is largely underground, "these things that are out of sight to a certain degree are out of mind until something happens," says Spearman, who is also volunteer chairman of his county planning commission in Saluda County, South Carolina. "Government has an issue prioritizing anything until it is a problem — that's the reactive mode," he adds.

A key part of that approach is consent decrees: agreements local governments reach with state regulators after a spill occurs. In 2017, Fort Lauderdale reached a consent decree with the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) following multiple releases of untreated wastewater between 2014 and 2017. The agreement required the city to make tens of millions of dollars in repairs and submit a plan for an asset management and capacity, management, operations, and maintenance program. The city says it's on track to complete the work required in the decree ahead of the 2026 deadline.

In 2019 alone, the Florida DEP reached consent orders with about a dozen cities or counties over sewage spills. In 2013, state and federal regulators reached an agreement with Miami-Dade County in which the county committed to $1.6 billion in repairs over 15 years.

While Fort Lauderdale has made progress on the work outlined in its 2017 consent decree, it is still looking to break its habit of disinvestment. In 2011, to avoid tax hikes, the city commission began diverting $20 million per year that should have been earmarked for utility maintenance and upgrades to other city services for a total cost of $120 million, Mayor Dean Trantalis said in an update to residents in January. The city started to wean itself off of that practice in 2018.

Days before the line broke in December, the City Commission allocated $14 million to move forward with construction of a bypass line as part of the southern portion of the 54-inch force main replacement project. The pipe, which is the main line serving the center of the city, was built in the 1970s and had suffered corrosion.

In January, the commission approved $65 million to design and construct a new wastewater transmission line that will take 18 months to complete.

Once the new line is in place, a second project is planned to rehabilitate the existing 54-inch sewer main, which will result in the city having two wastewater transmission lines for full redundancy and reliability. Other emergency repairs were to be completed early this year.

"The issues we are now addressing did not occur overnight — and cannot be fixed overnight," says Trantalis.

At the time of publication, Fort Lauderdale was dealing with yet another water main break.

Amy Sherman is a writer based in Fort Lauderdale. She works for PolitiFact and writes freelance stories about Florida.