Amgen spent $500,000 for a water-treatment plant so its drug-manufacturing facility could have clean water. State leaders stepped into a dispute last year to guarantee water for the plant.

The Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

For some Rhode Islanders, recent warnings from state leaders of a potential water crisis have not come as a total surprise.

The Kent County Water Authority has been confronting regional scarcity for years as explosive commercial and residential growth has outpaced the development of new water sources and improved delivery systems.

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Summertime has meant restrictions on lawn watering, with fines and service shut-offs for scofflaws. In parts of the water authority’s sprawling service area, new home owners seeking connections have had to plead with the water authority’s board and pledge to install low-flow shower heads and toilets. A moratorium on development has been repeatedly proposed and shelved.

The water authority’s restrictions and gloomy projections have spooked developers, provoked a lawsuit from the owner of the Centre of New England — a giant strip of retail and housing in Coventry — and prompted local officials to blame the utility for discouraging economic investment.

But until recently, that sense of urgency had never extended outside the water authority’s coverage area.

In the summertime, home owners served by other water departments, living just yards away from Kent County Water Authority customers, have been permitted to irrigate their lawns and wash their cars with impunity. The water authority’s prolonged efforts to pump more water from local aquifers have consistently run into opposition from state environmental regulators.

In April 2005, when the water authority board urged local, state and federal policymakers to spend $1 billion to transform acres of wetlands into the Big River Reservoir, its resolution did not provoke a single response.

“The fact that it didn’t go anywhere was an indication to us there was no interest in water issues,” said Timothy J. Brown, the water authority’s longtime general manager.

Then Amgen got involved. Less than a year later, the water issue is now on everybody’s lips.

“We have been talking about that for a long, long time, but nobody paid attention. Then they started screaming and everybody heard it,” said Francis J. Perry, a former chairman of the Kent County Water Authority board and a member of the state Water Resources Board.

For many months in 2005, the pharmaceutical company held intense negotiations with the water authority to obtain a guarantee of at least 800,000 gallons of water a day for its plant in West Greenwich — an enormous quantity even for a manufacturer. The two sides could not agree, and in February 2006, the dispute became publicly known.

State officials reacted fast. Sen. Stephen D. Alves, chairman of the Finance Committee, filed an unprecedented bill to force the water authority to meet Amgen’s needs. It passed the Senate less than a month later, and it was quickly approved by the House.

Governor Carcieri, after dispatching his chief of staff to meet with Brown, signed the bill on June 29.

Discussions of potential water shortages subsided after the last General Assembly session ended. But as Carcieri and legislative leaders announced their priorities earlier this year, it became clear that the Amgen controversy had focused attention on the issue.

“You read about that stuff happening in Arizona and New Mexico. Some people here probably didn’t recognize the seriousness of the issue until this brought it right to the forefront,” said William P. Devereaux, a lawyer at Pannone Lopes & Devereaux, in Providence, who represents Amgen.

Officeholders in West Warwick, Coventry and other communities have expressed concerns that public discussions of regional water scarcity might inhibit growth. But to Saul Kaplan, director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, it is critical that the issue get legislative attention.

“These are long-term, critical path items that underpin our entire economic development strategy,” Kaplan said in a recent interview. “We need to do this not just for Amgen, but for an entire innovation economy we’re trying to create.”

bgedan@projo.com