(The Center Square) — Taxpayers are still paying the price for violations of the Clean Water Act in Shreveport back in 2013.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency filed a complaint against the city of Shreveport over violations stemming from illegal discharges of raw sewage. The city’s violations included over 850 overflow incidences.
As a result, Shreveport entered a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requiring much needed upgrades to its decades-old sewer and water systems. They also had to pay a civil penalty of $650,000 to the United States and the state of Louisiana.
Shreveport is still under that decree and will be until 2026. The construction projects are still under way and in order to pay for the necessary improvements to comply with the decree, the city has had to increase its rates.
Water and sewer rates have steadily gone up since the beginning of the decree, including a slight increase effective April, 2024, and yet the upgrades are still falling short of the original agreement and time is running out.
At the time of the decree, it was estimated it would take the city 12 years and $342 million to meet the requirements in the consent decree. However, costs quickly outpaced those expectations, and for years Shreveport has been warning it doesn’t have the money to finish the job.
“The city is unable to fund remaining consent decree obligations without rate increases that would place an unconscionable financial burden on its ratepayers, especially its most vulnerable residents with low and fixed incomes,” said a 2023 report.
The report also said sewage rates for Shreveport residents has increased by 177% between 2013-22 and water rates have increased by 10% since 2020.
To fix this problem, the city has essentially moved away from the original plan of fixing everything and focused on the issues most important, like preventing sanitary sewage overflows.
“Several years into the consent decree, the city recognized that, despite spending over $200 million more in the first several years than was projected as the total cost, it would not be able to comply with the terms of the consent decree,” Mayor Tom Arceneaux said in a statement. “In addition, the city and its consultants realized that some of the requirements of the consent decree did not target sanitary sewer overflows at all or as effectively as other actions recommended by the city’s consultants.
“The elimination of SSOs is one of the primary goals of the consent decree. From that point forward, the city has been seeking changes and extensions to the consent decree. The city continues in those negotiations and is hopeful to obtain relief either from the negotiations or from the court.”
A 2024 spring report had Arceneaux thanking the citizens of Shreveport for approving all three bond propositions.
The report said the approved proposition entails $82 million for water and sewer system projects. This includes $20 million in projects at the city’s Amiss Water Treatment Plant, consisting of a new water intake structure in Cross Lake.
It also contains a new elevated storage tank in southeast Shreveport to address water pressure and reliability issues and more than $50 million in projects to address needs associated with the sewer consent decree.
