Agenda Summary
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Opposing the draft combined sewer overflows long-term control plan and calling for a regional solution.
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Official Text
WHEREAS: Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) occur when wet weather overwhelms the capacity of combined sewer and stormwater systems, causing millions of gallons of untreated wastewater-including raw human waste and harmful pathogens-to be discharged into Alewife Brook annually; and
WHEREAS: These discharges create a public health hazard, degrade our parkland and paths, and pollute our waterways and have an outsized impact on environmental justice communities; and
WHEREAS: Climate change is already causing and will continue to cause increased frequency and intensity of storms with increasing challenges of stormwater management; and
WHEREAS: This problem is regional in origin and scope, and it demands a regional response. Every community in the MWRA sewer district sends its sewage to the Deer Island Treatment Plant, so all share pipes, pumps, and treatment capacity. During large storms, the regional sewer system fills up downstream of the Alewife CSO outfalls, between the Alewife Brook Pump Station and the Chelsea Creek Headworks and between there and the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant. Once the system downstream is at capacity, the combined sewage overflows into the Alewife Brook; and
WHEREAS: The shared sewer infrastructure serving Somerville is also used by many upstream municipalities in the region and stormwater entering the sewer system in these communities, even in separated systems, contribute directly to Somerville CSOs; and
WHEREAS: The MWRA Enabling Act of 1984 established MWRA for the “repair, replacement, rehabilitation, modernization and extension” of the sewer system, “in the best interests of the commonwealth and its inhabitants, to promote the general health and welfare, to improve commerce and living conditions of the citizenry,” but it could not anticipate the increasing challenges caused by storm...
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