While reading Amy Palmer’s article titled “Board endorses new town water treatment plant,” several concerns came to mind about the existing and proposed plant. 

First, why does our current plant have such a short lifecycle (30 to 35 years)? 

Second, why has our current plant been so poorly maintained so that it needs such costly upgrades? 

Third, based on the engineer quoted in the article, why are town of Ipswich citizens being asked to pay for a new water treatment plant that will be at its design capacity in less than 14 years after it is commissioned?

When I served on the planning commission for the city of Tacoma, Washington, in the early 1990s, we reviewed and advised on the issues of facility lifecycles and whether it was cost-effective to retrofit rather than replace them.

The industry standard for the lifecycle of a water treatment plant back then, which I believe still holds today, was 40 to 50 years.

It is not uncommon for plants to last decades longer when treatment equipment is replaced and/or upgraded every 15 to 20 years. 

For some reason, at 34 years old, the Ipswich water treatment plant is “not large enough,” is “past its useful life,” and must be replaced because the “town’s population continues to grow.” 

According to Vicki Halmen, director for water and wastewater for Ipswich, and per an assessment made by AECOM in 2019 (when the plant was 31 years old), the existing water treatment plant “is in need of significant upgrades.”

Ms. Halmen was also quoted as saying, “The current plant is ill-equipped to address our evolving regulatory requirements, meet our future water demands with adequate redundancy, and to treat potential future sources.” 

As has been the case in the United States since at least the early 1970s, upgrades and/or modifications to water treatment facilities have been triggered by various conditions. 

The most common of these include changes to public health and discharge limits (limits have mostly been lowered by federal and state regulators), discharge volumes increase over time (which act as regulatory triggers), or new contaminants are identified that cause concern for human health or the environment. 

The impact of these changing limits has been well understood by the water treatment industry, and facility managers regularly address them through operations and maintenance programs or facility upgrades. 

Why weren’t the processing volume, treatment design, or redundancies in the existing plant robust enough to cope with the conditions outlined above? 

How is it that within a mere 30 years or so, our plant has been allowed to fall into to such disrepair whereby systems ranging from treatment pumps to the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) need to be replaced? 

The poor conditions described at the plant do not sound like they are extraordinary, but they should have, and still could be, addressed from a facilities maintenance standpoint.

In 1990, there were about 11,800 people in Ipswich, and in 2020 there were about 13,800.  In other words, the population of Ipswich from 1990 to 2020 grew by about 2,000 people, or about 17 percent (17%). 

Was our 1988 water treatment plant really designed to have less than a 25% increased processing capacity? 

I realize population growth and processing volumes are not a linear equation, but it seems short-sighted that upgrades or capacity improvements were not implemented over the life of the plant.

Are there no stopgap measures and/or less costly repairs that may be taken to address the critical deficiencies at the plant? 

Would it not be prudent to be cautious about raising taxes again? Given the economic burden already placed on the citizens of Ipswich due to the recently approved public safety building, the need for a new elementary school (or two), and certainly the other municipal expenses outlined by the town, might it not be more cost-effective to replace a roof or incorporate new technology into the existing plant to improve efficiencies?

In closing, if the proposed water treatment plant is brought online in September 2026, it would have a projected service life of 14 years before expansion or alteration would be anticipated. 

As noted in the article, in 2040 “the expected water demand” is supposed to be 2.5 million gallons per day, which is the maximum design capacity of the proposed plant. 

Given that these are generational facilities that serve communities for generations, it seems short-sighted to build a new water treatment plant with such a short design life. 

If repairs to the existing plant are not possible on a cost-versus-benefit basis, then we should invest in a new water treatment plant that is sufficiently sized to address community need through at least 2070. 

As a professional who has sat on a commission charged with making recommendations to improve water treatment facilities many times larger than Ipswich, as a consultant and business owner in the environmental, health, and safety industry for 30 years, and as an Ipswich homeowner for the past decade, I will not vote to approve the construction of the proposed water treatment plant.