Consultants and officials from the V.I. Waste Management Authority solicited feedback from residents during a town-hall meeting Thursday evening at the University of the Virgin Islands Albert A. Sheen Campus on St. Croix regarding plans to overhaul the island’s LBJ sewershed.
The project — part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s $1 billion prudent replacement of the island’s wastewater infrastructure — will involve inspecting and repairing or replacing more than 66,000 linear feet of pipes, 331 manholes and replacing the existing pump station. The sewershed includes coastal areas surrounding Christiansted, extending from near Golden Rock to the Pearl B. Larsen PreK-8 School.
“Our plan is to relocate the pump station, design better, build it better, and hopefully within the next 60-100 years, we don’t experience any issues with this station,” said WMA Engineering Manager Alex Bruney.
Kelly Blake-Smith, senior water resource project manager for consultant Kimley-Horn, said the pumping station’s current location — northwest of the Richmond Power Plant — puts it in a FEMA flood zone with poor soil drainage. Its proximity to the ocean and the corrosive salt air pose further problems. Several alternative sites were considered, and the consultants ultimately recommended a V.I. Housing Authority property southeast of the power plant.
“And so that was actually one of the hardest criteria we had to meet — is, how do we get the sewer to a new site if we want it to be higher, because we want it to be further away from the ocean,” she said. Other factors included potential impacts to the surrounding community and ease of access for maintenance vehicles.
“Pump stations need to be visited daily, and there are weekly routine activities that need to be done,” she said. “And back in the ‘60s — and this is true everywhere — in many places, we really didn’t plan. Engineers did not plan for all the activities that it takes to properly maintain a pump station.”
The alternative site, she said, was chosen in part to make maintenance as easy as possible. Though the project is federally funded, Blake-Smith said designers are also taking into account the decades of maintenance work to come.
“That is definitely a challenge for all of the utilities in the states who are going through such large renewal processes. You know, our goal today is, in the contracts that we put forward, that we want to have training, we want to have a significant amount of spare parts,” she said, noting the logistical hurdles to bringing heavy equipment to the territory. “So we’re going to do everything we can from this capital side of the house to bring the tools to be able to maintain these systems — and then I think this will be at a good place for the territory.”
A handful of residents attended the town hall, and WMA Interim Executive Director and CFO Daryl Griffith said more are planned to keep residents apprised of progress. Resident Wanda Centeno said she attended the meeting to ask about the project’s duration. Construction is expected to begin by the end of the year and conclude by December 2027.
“We asked them about the noise level, and then he mentioned that — of course — they’re going to have bulldozers, diggers, everything there … and then we also asked about if we’re going to be notified ahead of time,” she said.
One big consideration in moving the pump station is that it sits within the potential blast zone of the Richmond power plant. Centeno said residents are concerned about that, too.
“Right now the residents of LBJ — with the [V.I. Housing Finance Authority], they want to sort of buy us out because we’re in the blast zone, because we’re right there,” she said. “So we are trying to see where we come to a medium, because if we’re in an area like that, we shouldn’t be living there.”
Centeno’s neighbor, Alejandro Torres III, voiced similar concerns.
“I agree with what they’re doing” regarding the sewershed work, he said. “I just hope that they do it right.”
Between the issues with VIHFA, the V.I. Water and Power Authority and now the Waste Management Authority, Torres said LBJ Gardens residents are suffering.
“We’re in the middle of an industrial zone, and nobody cares,” he said. “Everybody thinks it’s an abandoned place, but we’re residents that lived there for over 65 years.”