Prudence Island has been under a boil water advisory for 4 years. Is an end in sight?

PORTSMOUTH — "DO NOT DRINK THE WATER WITHOUT BOILING IT FIRST."

This is the message residents of Prudence Island have been receiving at regular intervals since October 2018, when a water sample from the island’s main storage tank tested positive for both total coliform and E. coli.

Residents of the Prudence Island Water District (PIWD), which supplies drinking water to most of the island’s inhabitants, have been under advisory to boil their drinking water for nearly four years, and the notices aren’t going to stop any time soon.

The Rhode Island Department of Health has conducted 120 additional tests of samples from various PIWD drinking water sources since that positive test and, while all of those have come back negative for the E. coli strain, total coliform frequently has been detected in the island’s water supply — non-pathogenic bacteria were found in 23% of samples taken between 2017 and 2021.

Generally, coliform is non-pathogenic bacteria, meaning it does not cause diseases. However, the presence of coliform in drinking water indicates the potential for pathogenic bacteria, such as the specifically hazardous E. coli strain to also enter the drinking water system.

Total coliform in drinking water is considered a potential health hazard for human consumption, while the presence of E. coli is considered an extreme health hazard.

What is wrong with the drinking water supply on Prudence Island, and what is being done to fix it?

Rhode Island Department of Health project manager Amy Parmenter explained the boil water order for the Prudence Island Water District came after that first positive test for both total coliform and E. coli in 2018, and under the evolving consent order the PIWD has been under since, the PIWD has been required to issue and repeat the public order every 90 days, “so residents know they are still expected to boil their water, and also (to inform them) what Prudence Island is doing, and what the status is of what they’re doing, to get off the boil water order.”

As a result of the recurring presence of coliform in Prudence Island’s drinking water, RIDOH required the district to undergo some assessments to pinpoint and fix the source of the problem. Parmenter said it's been difficult to ascertain where the bacteria enter the water system because “Prudence Island did not have all of their homes inspected — they didn’t know what the status of the backflow preventers was in the homes in their water system.”

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After identifying backflow prevention as a key issue, RIDOH put the district under a consent order to implement a new cross-connection control plan calling for the inspection and identification of homes in need of backflow prevention upgrades and the installation of backflow preventers at every service connection.

“Prudence Island was not able to achieve that in the time frame that we came up with," said Parmenter. So the next step in the consent order was that if they’re not able to achieve backflow prevention throughout their system, then they were going to have to install chlorination treatment, in order to protect the system and to get off the boil water order.”

“All of a sudden, everybody on the island was mandated to install backflow preventers. That was probably a two-year exercise, and it was an absolute nightmare … a lot of work, a lot of money, a lot of aggravation, a lot of irritated customers. Today backflow preventers are installed at probably 99% of the homes on the island, but guess what?  We still have the same problem,” Ed Aldrich, a resident of the water district, said of the initial consent order.

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In addition to requiring chlorination treatment for the whole district, RIDOH also is requiring iron and manganese treatment prior to chlorination at the island’s Indian Spring wells. Both upgrades are expensive and will require extensive work.

“Our entire system is connected together as one," Chuck Bear, a PIWD board member, told The Daily News. "We have the Army Camp well, and we have the Indian Spring wells, which are notoriously high in iron … The north end sees more of the iron and manganese, but that is separate from the issue of boiling the water (due to the presence of bacteria).”

How is Prudence Island Water District going to afford multi-million dollar upgrades to its drinking water infrastructure?

Part of the reason it is taking so long for Prudence Island to upgrade its water system is the expense of the project. The treatment systems are estimated by RIDOH to be a $1 million expenditure, though the true cost won’t be known until the project goes out to bid, and Prudence Island has some other expensive water infrastructure needs entirely aside from the systems required to resolve the backflow prevention issue.

There is federal money available for local water infrastructure projects, but obtaining it is a difficult process involving lengthy applications, detailed engineering plans and environmental assessments submitted to multiple state agencies.

The small local water district, run by volunteers and operated on a shoestring budget, has submitted plans to the state for the treatment systems and identified funding to pay for the expensive upgrades.

“We’re very fortunate at this time to be able to say we can get money from the (state) infrastructure bank. We got earmarks in the federal infrastructure bill, and Portsmouth gave us some of their (ARPA money),” Bear said. “I don't think you get this kind of opportunity often where you can replace your leakiest pipeline, and put in the treatment system, and put in some other upgrades to make your system more reliable and easier to operate. This is great for us.”

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The federal Environmental Protection Agency releases money to state governments to be disbursed as low-interest loans through a Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, and Prudence Island applied for one of these loans through the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank in October 2021.

In tandem with, and as required by that financing application, Prudence Island also submitted its application and engineering plans for the new treatment systems to RIDOH in December 2021.

The water board now is waiting for RIDOH to OK its application in order to proceed. Parmenter says RIDOH has approved some components, including the corrosion control study and is currently working on a second and, hopefully, final round of comments for the engineering plans.

If all of those comments can be resolved by the PIWD, she says preliminary approval can be granted in the next few weeks. However, the state’s environmental engineer responsible for reviewing the comments told the PIWD in an email sent Sept. 15 she will be away until Oct. 11, so preliminary approval may not come until after that engineer returns to work.

The next step after preliminary approval is for the PIWD to submit an environmental assessment to the state. Bear told The Daily News the PIWD already has completed the assessment thanks to an allocation of ARPA money from the town of Portsmouth.

“We’re pushing — we got part of the ARPA money from Portsmouth and we gave it to the engineer to get the environmental assessment started. Instead of waiting for the infrastructure bank to approve money to do it, we used some (of the ARPA money) to push the project faster,” he said.

RIDOH will take an unspecified amount of time to review the assessment and offer comments, then Prudence Island will have 45 days to respond. After the PIWD obtains its environmental approval, the district can put the project out to bid and bring a final price back to the infrastructure bank to receive the financing.

When will the boil water advisory on Prudence Island end?

Parmenter thinks it's likely the bid will go out sometime at the end of 2022. However, “a few weeks” from now would put preliminary approval somewhere in October, followed by an indeterminate period of time for RIDOH to complete its review of the environmental assessment, up to 45 days for Prudence Island officials to respond to any resulting comments, and however long it takes for the assessment to be completed after the initial comment period — as illustrated above, there could be multiple rounds of back and forth comments before the state issues its approval.

Bear acknowledged it seems quite possible the project will not go out to bid this year.

“I really hope that it goes out to bid early next year. I think that’s most likely," he said.

Under the current consent order, Prudence Island’s new water treatment systems should be installed “within 450 days of receiving financing or issuance of the Finding of No Significant Impact for the Environmental Review, whichever comes later.”

According to Parmenter, that 450-day period represents the time the engineer thinks it will take to complete the installation of the new treatment systems. The boil water advisory will remain in effect through the more than yearlong construction period.

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In the meantime, Aldrich said many residents being supplied by the Indian Spring wells have had to install home filtration systems because the iron is discoloring their water, making it “tan at best, muddy-looking at worst.”

“Others like me, my well and the water that comes down my street is perfectly fine," he said. "I can tell you with all candor I’ve not boiled a drop of water since I moved here full time 10 years ago. I’ve ignored the boil water advisory and I’m fine. But other people are very much adhering to it.”

After the new treatment systems are installed, RIDOH will inspect them and issue final approval, allowing the Prudence Island Water District to actually start using the new systems. The boil water advisory will remain in place even after the system starts to operate, until it tests negative for coliform for two consecutive months.

Bear said he doesn’t anticipate the advisory being lifted until the project is complete.

“I really don’t see this thing being ready to use until the summer rush of 2024,” Bear said.

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Prudence Island boil water advisory reaches four year mark