Except the discharges continued, to the point where in all but three of the last 10 years, Haverhill released an even greater volume of so-called combined sewage overflow than it did in 2016, when the consent decree was signed.<\/p>\n
And last Friday, a worst-case scenario came true: The system buckled under the deluge of an evening storm and a 42-inch sewage main near the city\u2019s South Mill Street Pump Station broke in two places. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a result of not putting the funds in earlier on to fix this,\u201d said Heather Govern, vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation environmental group. \u201cIt\u2019s an issue that EPA should have dealt with earlier on … with a stricter message that you have to get this done a lot quicker.\u201d<\/p>\n
Millions of gallons of untreated sewage flowed into the river before the leak was stopped Wednesday. A barrier held back the solid waste, but polluted waste water forced the closure of beaches in Newport, Salisbury, Ipswich, and Essex to swimming, and led to closures of shellfish fisheries too.<\/p>\n
Testing from Monday and <\/a>Tuesday<\/a> showed bacteria levels at some locations along the river as high as 40 times the safe level, according to Curt Rogers, executive director of the Merrimack River Watershed Council.<\/p>\n The result: At the very time a punishing heat wave and the 250th anniversary of the country are converging, some of the region\u2019s best beaches were functionally closed. (Two were cleared for swimming late Wednesday after the leak was closed.)<\/p>\n The breakdown was a blow to tourism in the area, to the fishery, and to those hoping to enjoy the long weekend and escape the heat.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a major disruption, we know,\u201d Governor Healey said at a press conference Tuesday. \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re going to do everything that we can, and have been doing everything we can, to get this fixed, and to get everything back online as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n The EPA, for its part, said its priority is to support state and local partners working on the situation and to offer technical support. \u201cAs repairs progress on the system, EPA will continue, together with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, to monitor and evaluate compliance including with the 2016 Consent Decree, making sure all necessary environmental and public health requirements are met,\u201d said agency spokesperson Ellen Frank-Lajqi.<\/p>\n Now that the leaks are fixed, inspectors can start investigating what went wrong. The answer, according to some officials, should be pretty obvious.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what aging infrastructure looks like,\u201d state Representative Andy Vargas wrote in a Facebook post. \u201cThe pipe that failed is 1970s-era concrete near the end of its life. This is a problem that runs through many Massachusetts communities, not just Haverhill.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, across Massachusetts, many cities and towns are grappling with infrastructure that wasn\u2019t designed for the size of the population or the kinds of rain events that are becoming increasingly common as the climate warms, leading to greater amounts of moisture in the atmosphere and bigger storms.<\/p>\n Because many of these old systems, such as the one in Haverhill, route both storm water and sewage through the same pipes, they can be overwhelmed by a major rainfall and the excess waste water is directed into overflow pipes that empty in streams and rivers such as the Merrimack. It\u2019s either that, or residents would have that polluted water backing up into their basements.<\/p>\n The solution is to separate the lines \u2014 one for sewage and another for storm water \u2014 or to create large storage tanks that can hold the waste water until a storm has ended, and then treat it after. But both options are easier said than done, because they often cost tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars \u2014 price tags that are often beyond the ability of a smaller community to shoulder on its own. <\/p>\n In 2017, as part of the consent decree, Haverhill identified 28 deficiencies and a schedule for completing them, tabulating that the fixes could cost an estimated $56 million. <\/p>\n In subsequent reports, the city detailed steady progress. For example, in its most recent compliance report<\/a>, from April, Haverhill reported eight action items remaining, including continued work on emergency response training, and standardization and upgrades at some pump stations. <\/p>\n Also in that report, the city noted a contractor was working on final designs for discharge pipe replacements at the South Mill Pumping Station \u2014 the site of the recent breaks.<\/p>\n The federal government has used consent decrees such as the one in Haverhill to push local governments to act, but advocates say that\u2019s only so effective. Without funding, it\u2019s hard to actually make that work happen.<\/p>\n \u201cThese consent decrees are huge and overwhelming for any municipality,\u201d said Rogers. \u201cOur perspective in general is, how do we support the towns in getting the funding to make these corrections?\u201d<\/p>\n What often happens, said Govern of the Conservation Law Foundation, is that cities and towns \u201ccry poor,\u201d and say they don\u2019t have the funds for the upgrades, which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and the EPA offers some leniency. <\/p>\n \u201cEPA will move the goal line for these towns and cities, and that\u2019s why it sometimes takes 20 or 30 years for these separations to happen,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n That\u2019s been true in Haverhill, where the city occasionally has asked for small extensions over the years. Those have been granted only if there\u2019s a good reason, said Robert Ward, director of Haverhill\u2019s Department of Public Works, and only if it\u2019s clear that the delay isn\u2019t the fault of the city.<\/p>\n But the concern about a lack of funds is real, too, said US Representative Lori Trahan, who said she talked so much about the issue when entering Congress in 2019 that she was known as \u201cthe sewage lady.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese are extremely expensive projects that can\u2019t be funded or completed overnight,\u201d she said. And the federal government has consistently failed to offer funds for this kind of work. <\/p>\n When Trahan entered Congress, the federal government had a municipal grant program aimed at this problem, but it was not funded. It now has a grand total of $41 million \u2014 for all the 800-plus communities across the US with combined sewer systems. <\/p>\n \u201cOver the course of history, the feds have kind of walked away from these federal investments,\u201d said Trahan, who represents Massachusetts\u2019 Third District, which includes Haverhill and other cities along the Merrimack River. \u201cThat\u2019s hugely problematic because these are super expensive projects and they\u2019re time consuming. They require a sustained investment.\u201d<\/p>\n Federal funding options are often just low-interest loans, too, which means the city has to lean on ratepayers. In the past five years, Haverhill has received $220 million in low-interest loans from the state, including $50 million this year for the waste water treatment facility and upgrades at the South Mill Street Pump Station.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re trying to balance getting things done with costs, which are ultimately paid for by the ratepayers,\u201d said Ward.<\/p>\n Particularly frustrating, he said, is that the section of the system that broke was scheduled to be upgraded and was included in Haverhill\u2019s capital improvement plan, which they expected to get to in a few years. Other big projects are completed or underway, such as upgrading the waste water treatment plant (with a $60 million to $70 million price tag) and separating sewer lines in some parts of the city (to the tune of $33 million).<\/p>\n The work \u201cis way more extensive than people understand,\u201d said Ward, who has been in the public works department for 31 years.<\/p>\n In a sense, having that many years under his belt is helpful at times like this, when so much goes wrong. Days into responding to the leak, he said his attitude is, \u201cYou know what? Stuff happens. We\u2019ll deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Sabrina Shankman can be reached at sabrina.shankman@globe.com<\/a>. Audrey Tomlin can be reached at audrey.tomlin@globe.com<\/a>. Thai Theodoro can be reached at thai.theorodo@globe.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Except the discharges continued, to the point where in all but three of the last 10 years, Haverhill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-737938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}