Agenda Summary
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Opposing the draft combined sewer overflow 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: 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 flows from these communities, particularly those without fully separated sewers, contribute directly to Somerville CSOs; and
WHEREAS: The MWRA Enabling Act of 1984 mandates 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,” and the Legislature provided MWRA with a funding mechanism to pay for those improvements; and
WHEREAS: The city of Somerville and the city of Cambridge should not bear a disproportionate share of the cost to address a regional problem; and
WHEREAS: This re...
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