If you have to give an elected body some really, really bad news, a good strategy is to line up experts, put together a PowerPoint presentation and print a booklet. And that is what Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell did Tuesday night.
            The really, really bad news was that Wake Forest’s sewer system – the pipes – are, in some cases, in shocking condition and need $15 million work of construction to meet today’s needs. If you add another $1.2 million worth of work, the system will meet the town’s needs through 2035.
            Upgrading the sewer system is essential because the state now charges hefty fines for sewer system overflows and spills, and Raleigh, which owns the town’s utilities under the 2005 merger agreement, is working hard to avoid those overflows and spills throughout its widespread system.
            There was no definite information Tuesday night about the impact the sewer upgrades will have on customer bills or the amount of increase in the merger payback period.
            However, at the close of the meeting the commissioners informally agreed to proceed with the necessary construction as well as contract with Raftelis, a firm which has done studies for town sewer and fire impact fees in the past, to update the sewer impact fee study. The current availability or impact fee for new construction “has made a significant impact on that [merger] payoff,” Town Manager Mark Williams said.
            “This doubles the capital portion of the merger agreement,” Raleigh’s assistant public utilities director, Robert L. Massengill, said, “but it’s nothing that can’t be overcome.” He suggested a “moderate” rate increase for sewer customers of about 6 percent which would result in a payback end date of 2015. Because of rapid growth, the town has been on a fast track to payback, a total of seven years ending in 2012.
            Massengill said the average Raleigh utilities customer uses 4,500 gallons of water each month and pays $36 while a comparable Wake Forest customer pays $50.25. He and O’Donnell said the town’s water rates – frozen since the 2005 merger – are less than Raleigh’s because Raleigh has had a number of water rate increases. “Your sewer component is higher,” Massengill said.
            Commissioner Peter Thibodeau said a 6 percent rate increase for customers would amount to about $3 a month. He also said doing the engineering and getting bids for the project at this time would most likely result in much lower costs. He referred to a recent bid that was less than half the engineer’s estimate.
            The commissioners were aghast and shocked in 2008; Tuesday night they could have sat for a group portrait illustrating words such as glum, morose or gloomy.
            But later in the meeting Commissioner Margaret Stinnett asked a question town residents may be asking. “How could it [the merger agreement] have been sixteen million off?”
            Williams replied the town did not have the numbers five years ago and stuck in a cost of $1 million for the sewer upgrades “as a place holder.” In 2008 O’Donnell responded by saying the town had not done a $1 million study of the system.
            “Fifteen million is a big enough piece of the puzzle,” Stinnett said. “That’s Vivian’s over-under bridge on the northern loop.” Mayor Vivian Jones and others have advocated for the town to connect the northern loop with a bridge over or a tunnel under the CSX rail line next to North White Street.
            Massengill acknowledged the town’s sewer system is in worse shape than those in other Wake County towns where Raleigh has assumed ownership of the utility systems. “There are two other communities looking at significant numbers too, and their growth has not been anywhere near what Wake Forest’s has been.”
            The great need for repair and new construction was confirmed by two studies. In June 2008 O’Donnell told the commissioners a three-year study by the firm of W.K. Dixon concluded it would cost $7 million – “or a lot more” – to upgrade the sewer lines to meet current conditions. The “more” was to meet future conditions.
            Because of the expense outlined in the Dixon study and what O’Donnell called “some discrepancies,” Wake Forest and Raleigh agreed on a second study done by Hazen & Sawyer, an engineering firm the town had used for several of its studies before merger.
            “Unfortunately, they came up with similar results,” Massengill said. One finding is that the town sewer lines gain a lot of unwanted water through inflow and infiltration, adding to the need for larger pipes and higher treatment costs. Unfortunately, Massengill and Williams said, the studies have not found “the smoking gun, the big source.” Both said it may be a number of small sources, leading to their conclusion it is better to deal with the capacity of the pipes.
            Massengill also said that if the work is not undertaken Raleigh and the town would be forced to do it by state regulators.
            “We want to assure the town it has adequate sewer capacity,” Robert S. DiFiore, vice president of Hazen & Sawyer, said. He said his firm identified the deficiencies and looked at the most cost-effective way of repairing them.
            DiFiore also brought up another reason for some of the bottle-necks – where large pipes meet much smaller ones – and other problems. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the town was building the Smith Creek wastewater treatment plant to replace two totally inadequate plants, almost all of the funding came from federal grants “which had strict requirements about how much future growth you could build into the sewer system. “That limited the size of the pipe.”
            He introduced X. “Frank” Qiao, “the best sewer modeler in this part of the country,” and Z. Michael Wang, both with Hazen & Sawyer, who worked to develop the hydraulic model of the town’s system given different rainfall events, size of future population, where and how future commercial and residential growth is built and other factors. “We plug in the flows and look at the sewer system and see where it’s going to be surcharged or overflow.”
            DiFiore said the probable solution would be to build parallel larger pipes next to the existing ones where possible and replace others where there is not enough easement for the parallel pipes. The improvements listed are to replace or parallel a 15-inch pipe with a 30-inch pipe from Durham Road to Capital Boulevard in the Richland Creek basin and replace four pipes in the Smith Creek basin: a 16-inch pipe to replace a 10-inch one from Franklin Street to Heritage Heights, a 24-inch pipe in place of a 15-inch pipe from Heritage Heights to Lagerfeld, a 30-inch pipe to replace an 18-inch pipe from Lagerfeld to Unicon Drive, and a 30-inch pipe to replace a 24-inch pipe from Unicon to the wastewater treatment plant. All of those improvements would take the town to 2035.
            Stinnett said she had seen the result of inadequate pipes. In the valley behind her house “I’ve seen the manholes blow off” and sewage run into the stream there.
            At the close of the meeting, Williams said the town staff will return to the board with suggestions about how best to pay for the construction.
            Merger has been cost-effective for the town, Mayor Vivian Jones said. Without merger the town would be paying to run a water line from the Neuse River to a water treatment plant that would have to be expanded. “You’d be paying three times what you’re paying now, and that would be forever. Don’t ever say we didn’t save money by merging.”