RS&W’s consultant, BCM Engineers, estimated the total cost of replacing gravity sewers “in kind” throughout the Hideout to be approximately $25.5 million more than changing to a low-pressure sewer system. We simply could not afford (nor would our funding agencies have financed!) such a large difference in costs.

New low-pressure sewers can be installed at shallower depths because they are pressurized. Replacing our gravity sewers would have required much deeper excavations and therefore much higher costs. With gravity sewers, we would also have had to replace or upgrade all 29 of the wastewater pumping stations in the community. Using low-pressure sewers eliminates these pumping stations entirely.

When the gravity sewers were initially installed here in the early 1970s, we did not have the thousands of homes and miles of road paving that we have now. While all utility replacement is disruptive and costly, the difference between the very deep trenches needed to replace our gravity sewers now and the much shallower trenches needed for low-pressure sewers is very significant.