The Board of Estimates today committed $63 million in city funds and state loans to rehabilitate the 114-year-old Eastern Avenue Pumping Station, a landmark on President Street that still serves as the beating heart of Baltimore’s sewage system.

The ornate, Romanesque Revival structure houses the machinery that pushes sewage collected from downtown, the harborfront and other low-lying areas uphill to Highlandtown through a 99-inch-diameter underground pipe. From there, the sewage flows by gravity to the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant in Baltimore County.

First powered by coal, now by electric turbines, the plant has the hydraulic capacity to lift more than 100 million gallons of sewage a day up the 75-foot incline to Highland Avenue and Conkling Street.

The structure has undergone sporadic upgrades in the past, but will now be equipped with all-new pumps, valves and screening systems, plus the repair of its roof, orange brick walls and sandstone and granite trim to its original beauty.

Scheduled to take six years to complete, the contract is quite a bit higher than the city engineer’s low estimate of $50 million.

At the same time, the board rejected the rehabilitation of the badly deteriorated pipeline that carries sewage from west, northwest and central Baltimore whose population, unlike the relatively affluent areas served by the pumping station, is 73% Black and 38% low income.

Restoring the 100-year-plus-old brick and concrete main has been in the planning stage for more than a decade after a section of it collapsed in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood in 2016.

The Department of Public Works has repeatedly delayed implementing the project, despite being under a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Maryland Department of the Environment.

Last October, three firms bid on the contract, with Spiniello Companies coming in with a low bid of $29.8 million and Insituform Technologis with a high bid of $45 million.

Today, however, Mayor Brandon Scott and the rest of the BOE rejected all bids for “SC 985R, Rehabilitation of the High-Level Interceptor.”

The spending board accepted DPW’s written explanation that “due to unexpected financial limitations” it “has decided to reject all bids for this project” and it will distribute the allocated funds “to other high-priority projects.” Matthew Garbark, the DPW director who sits on the BOE, was not asked to explain the decision.

Scott’s action plan, released today, specifically cites improving the city’s water and sewer systems to support “equitable access.”

The cancellation came on the same day that Scott released his Second Term Action Plan, which includes “modernizing public infrastructure” as a top priority. The plan specifically cites improving the city’s water and sewer systems to support “equitable access” as well as economic growth and long-term resilience.

A similar argument of financial limitations was used by DPW when announcing last September that it could not meet a 2030 deadline with EPA and Maryland to stop the overflow of raw sewage into the Jones Falls and Herring Run during heavy rain events. The city has proposed a new deadline of 2046.

Even if DPW could complete the sewer improvements by 2030, a deputy stated at a public meeting last January, “the [customer] rates would be just too high for many people to afford, and that’s not something a responsible utility would do.”

“Potential environmental injustice”

A 2020 EPA review of the city’s sewer projects touched on the racial composition of the neighborhoods served by the Westside pipeline and the “potential environmental injustice” impact of its rehabilitation.

While reconstruction would inevitably result in “temporary adverse effects,” the project “is anticipated to have an overall beneficial effect on the environment and local population,” the report said.

The DPW deputy’s remarks at the public meeting came three days before the January 19, 2026 collapse of a section of the Potomac Interceptor, which dumped hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the Potomac River.

Last month Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water), saying that the agency was aware that the pipeline showed unmistakable signs of corrosion and a high risk of structural failure.

“Millions of gallons of raw sewage in the Potomac River does not just disappear, it damages ecosystems and harms communities, and it demands accountability,” Brown said in a press release. “DC Water knew this aging infrastructure was corroding, yet it delayed repairs and failed in its duty to protect this treasured waterway, failures that we allege constitute gross negligence. We are going to court to make sure they make it right for Marylanders.”

Given DPW’s knowledge of the dilapidated condition of the High Level Interceptor, together with Scott’s stated commitment to equitable infrastructure spending, one would think that making it right for West Baltimore would be a top priority.