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As an environmental justice community, New Bedford is disproportionately burdened by a legacy of industrial pollution and waste.
In 2025, some things have changed — and some haven’t.
New Bedford residents this year quashed a trash fire on Shawmut Avenue, wrangled rats, and made their voices heard on a contentious waste transfer station proposal. They also swam at their own risk while the city continued its work upgrading the aging sewer system, which dispenses stormwater and raw sewage into the harbor after heavy rain.
2025 IN REVIEW
But the past year wasn’t all trash talk and sewer overflows. The New Bedford-Fairhaven Harbor got a bit cleaner, and the city reinvigorated plans to bring recreational waterfront access to the North End.
Here were the top environmental issues facing New Bedford in 2025.
Waste not, want not
This year the New Bedford Board of Health rejected a controversial waste transfer station proposed in the city’s Far North End. The facility would have been the fifth of its kind in the area, making New Bedford one of the most waste-burdened cities in the state.
Parallel Products, doing business as South Coast Renewables, LLC, pitched the waste transfer station as a solution to the city’s looming waste crisis. The Crapo Hill Landfill, which serves both New Bedford and Dartmouth, was set to reach capacity within the next five years, and Massachusetts cities are increasingly exporting their waste out of state as landfill space gets scarce. (In August, the Greater New Bedford Regional Refuse District announced plans to expand the Crapo Hill Landfill, adding another eight-plus years to the original estimated lifespan.)
Unlike landfills, waste transfer stations take in municipal solid waste from across the region, consolidating and sorting the material for any recyclable goods before it gets shipped to its final destination — most often a landfill or out-of-state incinerator.
Environmental activists argued that a waste transfer station does nothing to solve the long-term waste management problem except help companies profit off of pushing the trash somewhere else. Waste transfer stations can also come with a host of potential public health risks, including high risks of fire and rodent infestation — both of which plagued an existing waste transfer station on Shawmut Avenue in May.
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection greenlit the project in July after an extended public comment period, making the local Board of Health the last environmental regulatory body to approve or shut down the proposal.
The board held six public hearings on the subject, the fourth of which saw hundreds of residents turn out to oppose the project. Residents heckled expert witnesses, held signs with plastic rats on them, and even dressed up as a dumpster to make their concerns known. In mid-September, the Board of Health denied the project in a 2-1 vote, citing concerns about increased traffic, fire safety, rodent control, and air quality.
Residents like Betty Saulnier, who lives a quarter-mile from the proposed project, breathed a sigh of relief — as did activist Wendy Morrill, president of South Coast Neighbors United. She noted that Board of Health member Alex Weiner called the process long, exhausting, and tiring.
“I truly believe that when Alex said that, he wasn’t just speaking for the Board of Health,” Morrill said. “I think it was him very respectfully acknowledging that this has been long and exhausting for this entire community. … We have been taking the time out of our personal lives to do the research, to be informed, to be engaged, to interact at every step of the way.”
In October, South Coast Renewables, LLC appealed the decision. The Conservation Law Foundation has since joined the appeal as a third-party intervener, representing New Bedford residents who oppose the project. If South Coast Renewables wins its appeal, the Board of Health cannot impose any conditions on the plan retroactively — the project will go straight to the city Planning Board.
Throughout the review process this summer, residents and Board of Health members questioned how the city could hold South Coast Renewables accountable to its promises not to harm residents’ quality of life.
One clue could be to look again at the transfer station on Shawmut Avenue. After this summer’s rat outbreak, MassDEP fined the company responsible, E.L. Harvey & Sons, Inc., just under $30,000. That same month, the Environmental Protection Agency fined E.L. Harvey $86,000 for illegally polluting the city’s waterways over a period of two years.
In 2024, Waste Connections, E. L. Harvey’s parent company, reported an annual net income of approximately $617 million, according to filings with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.
Jonathan Darling, the city’s public information officer, did not answer whether the city was taking additional steps to monitor the facility.
Darling also declined to comment on what the recent infractions could mean for any future waste facilities. The mayor’s office is under a consent agreement that prevents Mayor Jon Mitchell from publicly opposing the South Coast Renewables project.
Bring on the waterworks
Last year, the EPA completed its 50-year cleanup of the New Bedford-Fairhaven Harbor, one of the country’s first ever Superfund sites.
This year, the New Bedford Port Authority continued to lower the amount of PCBs in the harbor sediment. The city also renewed talks about the long-awaited Riverwalk, a proposed waterfront park space that would also restore critical marshland habitat along the mouth of the Acushnet River.
The new park has the potential to transform New Bedford’s North End — at least, that’s what Mitchell is counting on. Eventually, the mayor hopes the riverfront will host crew races, boating, and a thriving business district.
But the city still has a long way to go before its waterways are ready for the full suite of recreational activities.
New Bedford is one of roughly 700 communities across the U.S. with a combined sewer system that occasionally experiences combined sewer overflows (CSOs). When it rains, the system expels both stormwater and raw sewage out of outfall pipes around the city to prevent the excess water from backing up into people’s homes.
Fairhaven, Providence, Boston, and New York City all experience combined sewer overflows, but CSOs are especially challenging for New Bedford’s burgeoning aquaculture industry. Shellfishermen can’t legally harvest or sell their oysters in the days after a CSO incident due to potential for harmful bacteria, and last year CSOs closed harvests for about half of the year.
In 2025, New Bedford experienced 377 CSO incidents, or 69 days with at least one CSO incident, expelling a total of 393 million gallons of stormwater and sewage into the harbor. That number is down from 465 incidents, 80 days with incidents, and 639 million gallons expelled in 2024. Incident counts can vary greatly from year to year depending on rainfall.
The city is in the midst of a 20-year plan to decrease CSOs to 100 million gallons per year by 2037, but the total cost to upgrade the city’s aging sewer system is estimated to be $1.2 billion. The New Bedford Department of Public Infrastructure, which oversees these upgrades, did not accommodate an interview for this story after multiple requests over several weeks. In September, the city’s public information officer Jonathan Darling said the city had “nothing new to report.”
Email Brooke Kushwaha at bkushwaha@newbedfordlight.org.
Our area residents deserve better, 2026 will mark 30 years since the new sewerage treatment plant was put into operation (Aug 22. 1996) since then the city has done limited work to modernize the plant and our aging sewerage system. We have 27 Old Out Fall Pipes that have not been capped and every time it rains, millions of gallons of raw sewerage pour into the Acushnet River, Clarks Cove, and Buzzard Bay. Many of us were at the meeting for the Final EPA Environmental Report in 1991 where they stated to stop the pollution of our waters, beaches, be able to continue to fish, shellfish, swim, not make people sick, and not affect neighboring towns, these Outfall Pipes All Must Be Capped. Once again 30 years later and our governors, state legislators, mayors, and councilors have done nothing to address this and if it’s not done soon our waterways and beaches will be lost forever.