The path to a cleaner Chesapeake Bay may run through the heart of Baltimore in the form of a 10-foot-wide trench.
Neighborhood leaders from Hampden to East Baltimore are grappling with the potential effects of a $40 million sewer project - one of the most complicated the city has undertaken - that will require a four-mile trench so workers can install a new main starting in spring.
While city officials say the project will reduce the dumping of raw sewage into area waterways, including the bay, homeowners along the route are worried about the potential for weeks, or even months, of disruptions.
Closed streets, they fear, could wipe out already limited parking and force motorists to detour into once-quiet residential areas. Some worry that the underground pipe work will be noisy and might even rupture the plumbing that leads into their basements.
And then there are the rats - which some predict could be stirred out of their hideaways.
"This is, by definition, a nightmare project," said City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, whose district includes much of the affected area. "People are worried."
Letters on the project went out last week to 14,000 residents, surprising some.
Baltimore officials insist that the ditch, which will run from 15 to 30 feet deep, will have only a minimal impact on the residents and nearby traffic. The project will be completed in segments, and the city has agreed to place an inspector on site throughout construction.
"We all understand that nobody wants to have their neighborhood disrupted," said Baltimore Department of Public Works spokesman Kurt L. Kocher. "We certainly have tried our best to minimize the disruptions."
The new sewer main, which will replace a smaller pipe that had undergone several repairs, is part of a much larger work plan crafted by Baltimore and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2002. The agreement required the city to spend $900 million in sewer upgrades over 14 years.
Though complicated and potentially disruptive, major sewer renovations are becoming common in cities across the nation as local governments wrestle with failing, century-old systems that no longer meet federal clean-water standards.
In the past two decades, federal regulators have signed agreements similar to Baltimore's with dozens of major cities, including Boston, Atlanta and Cincinnati, that require local governments to upgrade sewers to prevent them from dumping raw sewage into area waterways.
