Residents of Warwick’s Bayside neighborhood are decrying the high cost of assessments (estimated currently by the Warwick Sewer Authority to be between $20,000 to $30,000 per household, in addition to an undetermined hookup fee) to install about 12 miles of sewer mains, claiming the costs are much higher than what can be considered reasonable.

“We’re trying not to make this as adversarial as it could be,” said Marc Genest, a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and a Riverview Neighborhood Association member, during the public comment portion of last Thursday’s Warwick Sewer Authority meeting. “We’re trying to come to some kind of agreement where we get the sewers, we get what we need to protect the bay, but we also do it at a reasonable cost that doesn’t cost people their homes.”

The Bayside project that is in the final stages of design will bring sewers to Riverview, Longmeadow and Highland Beach.

In total about a dozen Bayside residents, along with Ward 5 city councilor Ed Ladouceur, made it to the meeting to show their disapproval of the high cost of installing sewers – a similar story to what is happening as sewers near the installation phase in the Governor Francis neighborhood.

Genest argued that asking Bayside residents to shoulder the full burden of paying for sewers was unacceptable, and that the unavailability of federal government subsidies made the present-day situation inequitable to those who received sewer service in the past.

According to his research, Genest reported that it cost about $2,400 in the 1990s to install sewers ($3,750 in 2017 money, adjusted for inflation), compared to estimates today that are nearly 10 times as high.

“Why is this? It has nothing to do with inflation,” Genest said. “Even when you take the costs of labor and equipment and everything else – even the archaeological aspect of this which wasn’t the case 25 years ago – there’s no reason why we should be paying $25,000 to $30,000. It’s called equity. One portion of the city cannot be forced to pay 100 percent of the cost when others have been free riders for decades.”

The “archaeological aspect” refers to the needs for the WSA to do exploratory excavation in the area to assess whether or not there is historic Native American burial sites or other artifacts before installing the sewers.

Without taking interest into account, the estimated assessments could cost each homeowner receiving sewers between $83 a month for 20 years for a $20,000 assessment, and $125 a month for 20 years for a $30,000 assessment. The assessments are currently slated to include the cost of designing and installing the sewers, the grinder pumps needed for a low-pressure system and repaving the roads once construction is finished.

“We haven’t had our roads paved for 25 years, and there’s a reason we haven’t had them paved in 25 years – they told us we were getting sewers,” Genest said. “Since the roads haven’t been paved in 25 years, adding insult to injury by making us pay for the paved roads after sewers are installed in incredible. It’s insulting. It’s outrageous.”

Adding to the insult, according to Genest, is that much of the neighborhood consists of low-income families, whom he said will now have to decide between keeping their current homes or selling them and moving when the new monthly sewer assessment fee kicks in.

“In particular, the Riverview section has a per capita income of $31,500. You’re literally talking about 95 percent of the gross per capita income to pay to have sewers put down into the streets. Not hooking up, not sewer fees or anything else, just putting the sewers on our streets,” Genest said, adding that 37 percent of children in the area receive free or reduced lunches. “No one in their right mind thinks we can afford this.”

Councilman Ed Ladouceur stated his belief that the Bayside residents, and other residents who have yet to have sewers installed, were getting the short end of a bad deal brought on by mismanagement throughout the city’s history.

“The city has failed and has let down the people who have not received sewers,” said Ladouceur. “The city screwed up a $130-some million bond, screwed up a $50 million bond because that was supposed to pay to get all the city [sewers] done, and it did not. And because it didn’t get done, the city and other folks lost federal funding to subsidize it.”

Ladouceur argued that, due to these changing financial circumstances, the argument that it wouldn’t be fair to have the city pay for at least the repaving of the roads doesn’t hold up.

“For somebody to say it would not be equitable to not have these folks pay for the roads when the other people did is ridiculous. That makes no sense at all,” he said. “That’s a ridiculous, political statement that makes zero sense. Because the folks that got sewers 25-30 years ago who were fortunate enough to be at the front of the line.”

Genest argued that installing sewers to protect the environmental integrity of Narragansett Bay was the shared responsibility of the whole city and the entire state, in accordance with the federal government, and that a few neighborhoods shouldn’t be asked to pay for 100 percent of the costs due to many years of the city being “financially irresponsible” in how it asked residents to pay for sewers.

“We all can agree on one thing, and that is a clean bay is a public good. It’s good for all of us,” he said. “Because the bay is a public good, it also means it’s a public responsibility. It’s not the responsibility of a few neighborhoods, it’s not the responsibility of 45 percent of the neighborhoods that did not receive sewers.”