The thrust of this Island Waters program is to work with all three towns on an island-wide program to improve stormwater management.”

Tom Ardito, executive director, Aquidneck Island Planning Commission

PORTSMOUTH — Some foreign creature was crawling through the pipes below Island Park last week, but it wasn’t a rat, snake or an alligator.

It was a professional GoPro camera attached to a 1,200-foot cable.

Workers from Inland Waters, Inc. were conducting video inspections of the outfalls as part of the Island Waters stormwater program. Island Waters is a collaborative partnership of government agencies and nonprofit organizations, led by the Aquidneck Island Planning Commission (AIPC), that’s aimed at achieving Clean Water Act goals on Aquidneck Island.

“This is one of a number of actions we’ve taken with both coastal waters and inland waters and our drinking water supply as well, to try to reduce pollution of all kinds into the waters of Aquidneck Island with a focus particularly on stormwater,” said Tom Ardito, AIPC’s executive director. “The thrust of this Island Waters program is to work with all three towns on an island-wide program to improve stormwater management.”

“This is just a portion of the entire Island Waters project,” added William Guenther, senior scientist with Fuss & O’Neill, Inc., the lead engineering consultant on Island Waters. “But essentially the project is looking at the island as a whole and ways to improve water quality for both the freshwater water supply reservoirs and the saltwater around the island. We’re not looking at it as a municipality-by-municipality perspective, but rather as an entire island-wide issue and attack it from that perspective.”

Last week’s focus was on “illicit discharge determination and elimination” (IDDE) in Island Park and Portsmouth Park, Mr. Guenther said. 

“It’s really aimed at cleaning up water quality by making sure there aren’t things going out into stormwater that shouldn’t be — that there aren’t potential connections from septic systems, sewer, washing machines or the random toilet,” he said. 

Clearing blockages caused by sediment, debris or trash is also part of the job. “Everything goes down these storm drains; it’s not just stormwater, unfortunately,” he said.

Inland Waters, Inc., one of the contractors on the project, carried out video inspections of about a dozen outfalls totaling around 1,800 feet of pipe in Island Park last Thursday. “They have cameras than are self-propelled that can essentially crawl through the pipe, and they can pan and tilt so if they do come across something in the pipe, they can look to the left or right or up and down to investigate that further,” said Mr. Guenther.

A video monitor on the back of a truck allows inspectors to see everything live. 

“If we can’t get (the camera) down because there’s some sort of obstruction or the pipe is too dirty, then we’ll go down and clean the pipe afterwards,” said Celicia Boyden, water resources engineer with Fuss & O’Neill.

Isolating the problem

While inspecting pipes on Seaconnet Boulevard, Ms. Boyden said initial testing hasn’t confirmed any illicit tie-ins. When abnormalities are found, they’re usually caused by a variety of factors, Mr. Guenther said.

“If it’s a septic system that’s leeching into a system, maybe the septic system needs to be upgraded. Maybe the pipe is deteriorating and needs to be repaired. It’s sort of a case-by-case basis depending on what the issue is,” he said. “In the case of someone’s washing machine being connected, you disconnect it.”

If a homeowner is responsible, they’re often not aware of the problem, he said. “A lot of times this isn’t negligence or someone trying to get one over. My experience is that most people … are more than happy to help,” he said.

Gary Crosby, the town planner for Portsmouth, which is one of Island Waters’ partners, agreed.

“We had an experience a while back with a homeowner,” Mr. Crosby said. “We were doing some testing of the waters and found some contamination in the outfall and traced it back to this individual’s home. It was an overflow pipe from his cesspool that was plumbed right into the storm drain. He instantly — that hour — began taking steps to fix the problem. He ended up having to have a port-o-potty in his front yard and not use the septic system, which was replaced within a few days. That’s typically how it works.”

Mr. Crosby said he welcomed Island Waters’ project partly because he can transfer the results to satisfy an IDDE required by the R.I. Department of Environmental Management. 

“That’s an important point,” Mr. Ardito said, “because the work that they’re doing here is required of all the communities in Rhode Island pretty much. Part of what (Mr. Guenther’s) group is doing, following up the work here, is writing up a standard protocol that DEM is interested in using with other communities around the state that need to do similar work, just to make it easier in the future.”

Relation to septic program

The Island Waters program is not to be confused with the town’s own inspection of individual septic systems, Mr. Crosby said. If the town finds that a system has failed, it turns the matter over to DEM, which is responsible for permitting and inspecting the installation of new septic systems, he said.

“All we’re doing is finding any failed systems if they exist,” he said. “If the system passes, they don’t have to do anything for another five years or in the case of advanced systems they have to provide us with maintenance records. So, the two programs here are related only in the fact that we’re looking for sources of contamination.”

Often times there will be groundwater contamination from failed septic systems that can leech into storm drains through cracks in the pipes, he said. “Ultimately this septic system inspection program will get at those systems that are contaminating the groundwater,” Mr. Crosby said.

For more about AIPC and Island Waters, visit aquidneckplanning.org and islandwaters.org.