By Walter Pryce
This is an opinion column. It reflects the views of the writer.
During the storms of Aug. 2 and 3, Niagara County Sewer District No. 1 handled about ten times its normal flow. “On a normal day-to-day basis, the sewer system takes in 6-7 million gallons of waste, and during the storm on August 2 and 3, we handled 60 million gallons,” district Chairman Mark C. Crocker told WKBW.
Lewiston’s own treatment plant, which has a 2.75 million gallon-a-day limit under its state permit, averaged 2.9 million gallons a day in July and 3.07 million in August, according to draft Town Board minutes. The minutes call that “not something that has ever happened before here.” They tie it to sewage backing up into Lewiston basements.
The response, so far, has been to stop saying yes. The district voted 4-1 on Aug. 26 to pause approval of the downstream capacity studies that larger projects need, through Feb. 26, 2027. Lewiston’s Town Board put its own six-month version, Local Law No. 6 of 2026, on its Monday agenda, as The Chronicle reported this weekend.
A short pause is defensible. An open-ended one is not. The moratoriums should come with something they do not yet have: a public repair plan, measurable targets and a firm end date that does not slide.
What the pauses do, and what they don’t
Neither measure touches an ordinary single-family home. Both apply to larger projects sending more than 2,500 gallons a day into the sewer, and both still let developers file studies and have them reviewed. That is the right design.
But Lewiston’s draft could be extended by resolution for additional six-month periods, and nothing in it caps how many. That is the part residents and builders should worry about. Moratoriums are easy to adopt and easy to renew, and every renewal pushes back housing the region needs.
The pause also does nothing, by itself, for the people whose basements fill when the pipes back up. Lewiston resident Linda Scalzo put the question plainly at a September Town Board meeting. “What is being done about the sewer? What is being done about the issues at my house that I’ve emailed you about?” she asked, according to Niagara Frontier Publications.
The fix is known. The schedule isn’t.
The cause is no mystery. Officials say the trouble is rainwater and groundwater getting into pipes built only for sewage, through cracked lines, loose cleanout stacks and sump pumps tied in where they shouldn’t be. Engineers call it inflow and infiltration.
Lewiston’s plant chief, Jeff Ritter, has started on the cheap end. Town crews plan to clamp loose vent stacks at about 50 homes he knows of, many around James Drive, and the plant is pricing pipe lining. Under rules dating to Local Law No. 1 of 2020, developers adding more than 2,500 gallons a day must pay to remove four and a half times the flow they add. “Funding doesn’t come from the water consumers or taxpayers. It comes from developers to do this. We don’t have a lot of money to do this,” Mr. Ritter said, as Niagara Frontier Publications reported.
That last sentence is the problem in miniature. If repairs are paid for mainly by new development, and new development is paused, the repair money slows down too. A moratorium that starves its own repair fund can renew itself forever.
The district, for its part, hired the engineering firm GHD to model its system, with a draft inflow and infiltration report expected in early September, according to its minutes. It offers member towns up to $25,000 each for their own leak work. Its September agenda listed “SPDES Permit Violations Due to Wet Weather Flooding.” SPDES is the state discharge permit program. As of this weekend, the minutes from that meeting had not been posted, so the public still does not know what the board was told.
The strongest case against a deadline
Mr. Crocker, the one no vote, makes the best argument on the other side: the pause may not be needed at all. “I voted no because I didn’t think it was necessary at this moment. We have actions in place right now to help the situation,” he told WKBW, pointing to a capacity study due this fall and orders for towns to inspect their systems.
Others argue the opposite, that a hard end date invites approvals the pipes can’t handle. That risk is real. But the answer is a repair schedule the public can check, not an indefinite freeze. If the work is on track, the pause can end on time. If it isn’t, residents deserve to know why before anyone votes to extend it.
Money is on the table, if towns qualify
There is help available. The state opened a $225 million Clean Water for Housing program this month to pay for exactly this kind of sewer and water work when it holds back housing. “No family should be unable to buy a home because their community’s water and sewer systems can’t support housing growth,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said.
The catch is that it is open only to certified Pro-Housing communities, and it is first-come, first-served. In Niagara County, the state’s dashboard listed five certified municipalities as of Oct. 16: the cities of Niagara Falls, Lockport and North Tonawanda, the Town of Newfane and the Village of Wilson, The Chronicle reported. None of the six towns in Sewer District No. 1 is on that list. The Town of Niagara is listed as pending.
What should happen now
First, Sewer District No. 1 should post GHD’s inflow and infiltration findings and its September minutes on its website before its next meeting, including what it was told about the permit violations.
Second, the district and the Lewiston Town Board should each adopt a written repair schedule with flow targets, and pledge that neither pause will be extended unless the board first shows, in public, which repairs were done and how much flow they removed.
Third, the supervisors of Lewiston, Wheatfield, Pendleton, Cambria, Niagara and the Town of Lockport should finish Pro-Housing certification this winter, so their towns can compete for state sewer money instead of watching it go to towns that moved faster.
Residents can help hold them to it. The Lewiston Town Board’s next regular meeting is Nov. 23, according to its meeting packet. Show up, or write the supervisor, and ask one question: what will be fixed by Feb. 26?
Photo: The Niagara River at Lewiston. Andre Carrotflower / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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