Pacific Magazine > Magazine > September 1, 2006

Guam

Water Under The Bridge

Water Authority Makes Significant Progress

By Frank Whitman, HAGATNA

The recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2006 Southwest Region Progress Report referred to “the safest drinking water Guam has experienced in decades.” That statement would have been unthinkable three years ago, when the federal agency was settling a lawsuit it had initiated against the government of Guam and Guam Waterworks Authority for violating the federal Clean Water Act. The basis for the suit was that “not only were we polluting, but we were polluting to the extent that we were threatening the health of the community,” says Simon Sanchez, chairman of the Consolidated Commission on Utilities (CCU).

The five-member CCU was first elected in November 2002, as a result of legislation designed to remove partisan politics from utilities management. It has responsibility for both the waterworks authority and the Guam Power Authority. A month after the election, the USEPA’s lawsuit was filed.  
      
The suit followed numerous sewage spills and notices for residents to boil tap water before consuming it. In addition, problems in the water distribution system meant that water outages were frequent in many of the island’s villages. A court order that settled the suit set out a number of steps to be followed along with a timeline for compliance.    

The price of compliance alone is pegged at $250 million and the complete overhaul of the system that most agree is needed—has been estimated as high as $1 billion. In order to secure funding the commission’s first task was to get GWA’s finances in order. “The record was horrible,” says Randall Weigand, GWA’s chief financial officer. The authority owed $15 million for power, it had about 150 more employees than needed, it faced lawsuits from the U.S. Navy and vendors and “there wasn’t much going on in the way of disconnection of delinquent customer accounts...we couldn’t go to the bond markets with that history and ask for money.”

The authority’s finances went from losing $14 million during fiscal year 2002 to breaking even in FY2005. In December 2005, GWA secured its first $100 million bond. The first large project is the $9.5 million refurbishment of the Hagatna sewage treatment plant which Black Construction Corp began in May. For years, the plant has been dumping millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the ocean daily. A $17.5 million contract to replace the outfalls from both the Hagatna plant and the Dededo sewage treatment plant is almost finalized.

The new outfalls will be deeper, longer and wider than the current ones. Meanwhile, the authority has, in accordance with the court decree: hired a new chief engineer, increased the number of certified operators at its plants, installed new generators, pumps and motors, and improved the disinfection system.

Other projects are to address distribution problems. Most recently, residents in southern villages were in the illogical situation of having their water shut off because of an abundance of rain. While most of the island’s water comes from an underground aquifer in the north, the southern Fena reservoir is on a Navy base and is operated by the military. Soil washed into the reservoir taxes the facility’s ability to clean it, and the Navy prioritizes water for base residents while cutting off the civilians. A $18 million upgrade to the Navy treatment facility is underway and GWA is making plans to bypass the Fena facility altogether.

While significant progress has been made, the waterworks authority has been fined for missing some of the compliance deadlines. In light of the progress that has been made, and understanding that the timeline was set based on assumptions about when tasks could be accomplished, the CCU has had “a very open discussion with EPA about reestablishing some of the deadlines that we had set in 2003,” says Sanchez. “EPA also is far more interested in compliance than in fine money.” Meanwhile, “We still have plenty of work to do.”