Baltimore weighs downtown pumping station rehab against delayed West Side sewer fix

Baltimore is moving ahead with a $63 million rehab of the Eastern Avenue Pumping Station, a 114-year-old downtown landmark that helps carry sewage from the harborfront and other low-lying areas, even as a crucial West Side sewer fix remains delayed.

The Baltimore City Board of Estimates approved the package on May 20, using city funds and state loans for a project the city engineer had pegged at a low estimate of $50 million. Work is expected to take six years and will replace pumps, valves and screening systems while restoring the building’s slate roof, brick walls, sandstone and granite trim.

The decision underscores how Baltimore’s sewer dollars can create clear winners and losers in the same budget cycle. The Eastern Avenue station serves downtown Baltimore, the Inner Harbor area and other low-lying neighborhoods by pushing sewage uphill through a 99-inch underground pipe before it flows by gravity to the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant in Baltimore County.

That makes the station both practical and symbolic. Opened in 1912 as part of Baltimore’s then-new sewer system, it was designed by Henry Brauns to house steam-driven Corliss pumps and, in early descriptions, could move as much as 27,500,000 gallons of sewage a day. The building later housed the Baltimore Public Works Museum from 1982 until 2010.

The West Side project sits in a very different political light. Baltimore’s sewer consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Maryland Department of the Environment dates to 2002, after hundreds of illegal wastewater discharges of raw sewage. EPA said the original system-wide cleanup was expected to cost about $940 million over 14 years, but advocates say the city’s latest thinking would push the sewer deadline from 2030 to 2046.

Blue Water Baltimore has argued that such a move would stretch sewage-overflow problems for nearly five decades and would keep the burden on low-income and Black neighborhoods that have long lived with backups, flooding and contaminated runoff. Baltimore’s Department of Public Works says the system still includes about 1,400 miles of sewer pipe, 4,000 manholes, 250,000 house connections, 10 pump stations and two wastewater treatment plants.

The contrast is hard to miss: a visible downtown structure with historic cachet is getting a fresh infusion of capital, while a less glamorous but urgently needed West Baltimore sewer fix waits its turn. In a city still wrestling with the cost of clean water and fair service, the order of repair is itself the policy.