Flickering lights. Signs that warn of danger. Corroded pipes.

The inside of the Pearl Street Pump Station looks like a horror film setting.

“It’s not my favorite place to go,” said Lacey Kremer, manager of engineering projects for the department of Water Resource Protection. “It feels haunted in there.”

In a conference room overlooking the pools and domes of South Portland’s water treatment facility, Kremer shared images of the Pearl Street pump’s crumbling interior with a few locals. Daphne and Dick Meyer, an interested couple in attendance, asked questions as they leaned back in swivel chairs, listening as the department hosted its first of many scheduled open houses aimed at building support for sorely needed infrastructure upgrades. Like many other towns in Maine, South Portland is faced with the daunting reality of aging wastewater infrastructure.

The city’s system — which includes 28 pump stations and 180 miles of sewer and stormwater pipes — is largely more than a half century old. It’s starting to show its age.

Within the past five years, South Portland has experienced nine force main (pressurized pipelines that transport wastewater) breaks: six on the Main Street Pump Station force main, which underwent partial replacement earlier this summer, and three on the Willard Beach Pump Station force main, which underwent replacement of the most vulnerable segments in 2024.

The Pearl Street Pump Station, which came online in 1978, has the highest consequence of failure, according to Fred Dillon, the director of Water Resource Protection. The pump collects wastewater from the western half of the city and funnels it to the treatment plant on Waterman Drive.

“If it blew up, it would be catastrophic,” he said. If the force main failed, the millions of gallons of wastewater pumped daily would flow directly into the Fore River.

And the station’s pumps, electrical system and force main desperately need to be replaced, something the WRP department has been talking about for a decade. The floors are falling apart. The lighting isn’t up to standard, and it’s dark and unsafe for the crew, according to Dillon.

To address these issues, the city of South Portland is planning to build a new pump station at 6 Pearl St., across the street from the current station. The project is currently in the design phase, and the WRP department has submitted permit applications to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers.

The department of WRP plans to solicit proposals in the beginning of 2026, planning for construction to start next summer. If all goes according to plan, the new station would come online in the fall of 2028. The current station needs to hold on until then, Kremer said.

In addition to having updated facilities, the new station will have an increased capacity, pumping 18 million gallons a day as opposed to 14.8 million. Instead of one force main running along the mud flat of the Fore River, there will be two running parallel courses.

The proposed upgrades are not only necessary, but also required to comply with MDEP’s requirements for combined sewer overflow, according to Kremer.

Right now, when there’s a serious rainstorm that overwhelms the city’s collection system, some of the stormwater — mixed with sewage — floods the control devices within some pipes, releasing the mixture into the Fore River before it can receive treatment.

These kinds of discharges include pollutants, and Kremer said the requirements have become more strict over time. In 1986, when there were 28 CSO outfalls — or discharge releases — the city pumped about 500 million gallons per year of combined sewage and stormwater into the nearby watershed.

By 2018, only four CSO outfalls remained within the city, with approximately 3.5 million gallons of discharge per year, a 99 percent volume reduction over 33 years.

With the increased flow capacity of the new Pearl Street pump, the city will be able to drop the number of CSO outfalls to two, complying with the city’s Combined Sewer Overflow Facilities Plan from 2022 and decreasing the amount of discharge.

“In that way, we lessen the impact on Casco Bay,” Dillon said.

Until construction is complete, the existing station will continue operating at full capacity, and once the new facility opens, the current pump station will be repurposed as a grit removal and screenings building to remove solids from the wastewater. The grit removal equipment at the existing station broke some time ago, burdening the wastewater treatment facility with solids mixed into the pumped material.

The project is estimated to cost approximately $50 million, and the department is working through funding, hoping to secure revenue bonds, according to Dillon.

“There’s going to be a substantial jump in sewage rates,” Dillon said. Currently, South Portland has the lowest monthly sewage rate within the Portland Water District, with the average monthly charge at around $75. Kremer said that while historically having low sewage rates may seem like a win, a lower budget makes it harder to fund all of the preventative work the city needs.

To fund the Pearl Street pump project, the WRP projects that the average monthly sewage rate will double by 2028.

Dillon recognized that it’s a massive project, one that requires community buy-in. Through the open houses promoted by the city, “we’re letting people know what they’re paying for,” Dillon said.

During the first open house, Daphne and Dick Meyer were led through the outdoor part of the treatment facility as the sky began to turn. The couple held hands as they treaded carefully across the grated walkway, a rushing stream of liquid mixed with microorganisms gurgling underfoot. They paused, hands gripping the railings, watching the foaming brown bubbles at the top of the pool of water.

A ‘WATER INFRASTRUCTURE NEED BOOM’

South Portland is not alone in dealing with aging wastewater infrastructure.

Most of the wastewater facilities across the state are 40 to 50 years old, built with federal funding in the wake of the Clean Water Act passed in 1972. But the average lifespan for a wastewater facilities is half a century, making many of these facilities ticking time-bombs.

“We’re in this water infrastructure need boom,” said Brandy Piers, environmental engineering services manager for the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, with many towns needing upgrades at the same time.

As wastewater infrastructure ages, it’s also being put under more pressure. Town populations across the state have increased within the past half century, overwhelming sewage systems.

For instance, the town of Yarmouth’s Royal River Pump Station is at capacity and in a desperate need of an upgrade. Last January, the station exceeded its flow limit, and raw sewage flowed into the Royal River, prompting a 21-day shellfish harvesting closure and environmental and public health concerns.

Now, the Town Council is considering a moratorium on development in the over 1,225 parcels served by Royal River Pump Station sewershed for 180 days as the town simultaneously contemplates replacing the pump station. The moratorium would ensure that the pump does not exceed its capacity in the interim.

And changing environmental factors are exacerbating the strain on already overburdened infrastructure.

Piers said that precipitation has increased in Maine within the past decade. There has been an increase in intense downpours — 2 inches or more, increasing the chances of flooding and wastewater overflow.

“The amount of wastewater that is coming to these pump stations is overwhelming,” Piers said. “If there hasn’t been an upgrade in a very long time, then getting the wastewater to the facility to treat it is a problem.”

More towns are seeking funding to support much-needed infrastructure improvements.

“Communities must be proactive and not reactive because proactive infrastructure improvements cost less than reactive,” Piers said.

After years of planning, the Freeport Sewer District prepared to launch a $20 million upgrade to its wastewater treatment plant earlier this summer. Funded by a $50 million bond, the city of Saco broke ground on a new wastewater treatment facility last year that is expected to be completed in 2027.

In the past, MDEP would receive approximately $30 million in loan requests per year for its Clean Water State Revolving Fund, supporting infrastructure projects for about 10 towns a year. But in the past five years, the demand has spiked.

This past year, MDEP received more than $400 million in project loan requests, with applications from 105 towns.

The identified need statewide is even greater, Piers explained. The Clean Watershed Needs Survey from 2023, with responses from 170 of the 185 wastewater IDs, found that there was $3.1 billion in needed water infrastructure updates in the state. Three quarters of the evaluated needs related to wastewater treatment.

But the state can’t fund every proposed project. This year, the fund only has $125 million to allocate, meaning that only 30 percent of projects will get funded.

MDEP has strict criteria to assess risk and allocate funds. “It’s all mathematical,” Piers said. The department uses a point allocation system that includes public health hazard priorities such as water supply protection, lakes protection, shellfishery protection, water quality concerns and facility needs.

Towns that don’t receive these grants will have to find other funding sources, and some may continue to hope that their existing infrastructure can hold on for a few more years.