After last week’s rain, the Pawtuxet River looked to be close to spilling over its banks.

Would waters be lapping at the base of the Warwick Sewer Authority levee?

But while the river was full and flowing rapidly, it wasn’t threatening the city’s wastewater treatment plant. It was a different story seven years ago come March 29. Not only did waters spill over the levee, knocking out waste water operations but they inundated Warwick Mall, closed a section of Route 95 and flooded businesses and homes on both sides of the river.

The March 29 to April 1 storm delivered 8.8 inches of rain to an already saturated state. Over a period of 38 days, the state had seen 21.15 inches of rain.

It took months to restore any semblance of normalcy, with some riverside neighborhoods in Cranston never recovering as they were bought by the federal government and leveled.

But closing and relocating the city’s wastewater treatment plant was not an option. It would stay. It would be reopened at a cost of $14 million and, to protect it, the plan was to elevate the levee 5.5 feet.

It seemed like improving the levee would be the first thing to do – build the line of defense against flooding before sinking money into plant upgrades and improvements.

That’s not the way it has worked out. With residential customers with toilets, showers, dishwashers and washing machines, not to mention hotels, Kent Hospital, CCRI, the airport and numerous businesses, the priority was to get the system back online. The first order was to restore flow to the treatment plant, which could only happen once the floodwaters subsided and the plant, a pool inside the walls of its levee, was pumped out.

The first step was to chlorinate wastewater that was accomplished within days and then to restore treatment, which was achieved over the next couple of months. Work was done to the levee to restore it to its former height and repair places where it had been breached.

When it came to increasing the elevation of the levee, however, FEMA funding was questionable since the basic plant was up and running again in five days.

WSA executive director Janine Burke Wells credits Jamia McDonald, who was heading Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency, and now retired Fire Chief Edmund Armstrong with insisting that the FEMA public assistance grant remain open, thereby enabling the city to seek federal funding. A $3.6 million grant was approved in 2014. The project cost was estimated at $4 million, with the WSA picking up the difference.

“It was the common sense thing to do. It went through and they [FEMA] actually listened to us,” said Burke Wells.

Even with the federal funds the project has had its problems. But now it finally looks like the work is nearing completion.

“Seven years is a long haul…there can’t be instant gratification in this,” said Burke Wells on a tour of the levee, as she calls it a “thing of beauty” last Thursday.

The project that called for raising most of the levee by piling on more earth and sinking composite sheathing to create a wall on the southwest side of the site didn’t work out as planned. The interlocking sheathing was to have covered a stretch of 1,385 linear feet, but when contractors attempted to drive it in place on top of the earthen levee they encountered boulders that had not been shown on original plans. They had to go back to the drawing boards, and about $300,000 in sheathing the city had already bought still sits in a pile at the plant. Burke Wells said the WSA holds out hope of selling the sheathing. The authority is also pursuing legal means to recover costs from the contractor.

Yet costs kept climbing, although sections of the levee weren’t getting any higher.

Last year, the authority awarded DiGregorio Corporation of Smithfield a $2,465,460 contract to complete the levee work. In place of the sheathing, a wall of concrete blocks is rising on the plant side of the levee, which is supporting the elevation of the earthen levee on the opposite side.

When engineering and other expenses are included, Burke Wells put the cost of the elevated levee at $4.7 million. She said the authority aims to borrow the $1.1 million it needs from the state revolving clean water loan program.

“Although it’s been a long process since the historic floods of 2010, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the hard work and forethought that has gone into making sure such a disaster won’t happen again when it comes the city’s levee system. Despite having problems with the initial levee design, we ended up with a superior product. The Warwick Sewer Authority has done a tremendous job applying for grants to help offset the cost of the project, and I applaud them for the dedication to making sure the city will never have to deal with a similar situation in the future,” Mayor Scott Avedisian said in a statement.

As for when Burke Wells expects the levee to be completed, she said the contractor is shooting for March 30 and the seventh anniversary of the “Great Flood.”

“It’s a thing of beauty,” she insisted.