In addition to the activities completed in compliance with the Consent Agreement, the City developed a System Master Plan with estimates of the associated costs for the CSO Program which was submitted in November 2012 to EPA and RIDEM for their review and approval. Conditional approval of the System Master Plan was received in November 2013. In 2015, the City, RIDEM and EPA negotiated final modifications to the consent decree which give final approval of the System Master Plan and set the schedule for its implementation.
The purpose of the System Master Plan is to utilize all of the data collected to date in accordance with the consent decree along with an evaluation of the effectiveness of projects that have been completed in order to develop a system-wide plan to reduce CSO events in the future. To ensure the program was executed in a manner acceptable to the community, the city established a CSO Stakeholder Workgroup to provide input and feedback on the CSO program developed for the System Master Plan.
Since the SMP was submitted, the City has implemented the following activities from the SMP:
Based upon the approved System Master Plan and the modified Consent Decree, the City will proceed with the following activities over the next couple of years: