|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
As the weather warms and New Bedford residents look to get back in the water, city officials are looking for new, cost-effective ways to upgrade the city’s aging wastewater and sewer system.
City engineer Shawn Syde, Wastewater Superintendent James Costa, and Scott Craig of the engineering firm CDM Smith led a public meeting in May to discuss combined sewer overflows and other issues facing the city’s 160-year-old-plus sewer system.
The New Bedford Department of Public Works has plugged away for decades on sewer upgrades and infrastructure repairs to decrease flooding and reduce the amount of sewage dumped into the harbor. As costs add up, the city is looking at these upgrades with a new lens — and seeking public input on the solutions.
The city’s survey asks residents how they’ve been impacted by flooding, their concerns with New Bedford’s water quality, and whether they would be willing to pay a higher sewer bill to reduce flooding.
“When the Civil War was going on, it was a modern system,” Syde said. “It’s not so modern anymore.”
Combined sewer overflows, CSOs for short, are common in older cities like New Bedford. They occur during rainfall, when the city’s sewer and stormwater pipes, which both lead to the same wastewater system, divert excess water into the city’s waterways to prevent overflow into residents’ homes. These overflows are a major source of pollution in Buzzards Bay and can hinder both recreational swimming and the region’s burgeoning aquaculture industry.
Since 1990, New Bedford has reduced CSO incidents by 90%, but the last 10% will take years to eliminate entirely, Craig said.
The city last developed a wastewater infrastructure plan nearly a decade ago, in 2017, and has implemented hundreds of projects from that plan across the city’s 150 miles of pipeline.
This time around, Syde said the biggest challenge the city faces is ensuring that the 50-year-old wastewater plant at Fort Taber can continue to function as needed, which means finding cost-effective ways to make repairs. Over the next 20 years, the city expects to spend a smaller percentage of its resources on reducing CSOs and more on infrastructure repairs and maintenance, Craig said.
Syde noted that building and maintenance costs have risen 50% since the 2017 plan, prompting the city to get creative with existing funds. New Bedford has already spent $125 million on wastewater and sewer projects since 2017, but the necessary upgrades could cost a billion more by some estimates.
The biggest priorities for the new plan include preserving and improving water quality, improving public health, and restoring aging infrastructure. The plan also needs to anticipate upcoming state and federal requirements, such as stricter regulations on PFAS chemicals and nitrogen. Another goal is ensuring that all projects are financially sustainable for New Bedford’s largely low-income residents.
These projects are all the more important as large storms become more common in New Bedford due to climate change, Syde added.
Roughly 30 people attended the last informational meeting on CSOs in December, Syde said. Fewer than six members of the public attended May’s meeting, which was held in the New Bedford Public Library. City officials plan to complete the final report before the end of the year.
One attendee, former wastewater plant superintendent John Duraes, asked how everyday residents could help the city in its efforts.
Syde said residents should fill out the online survey, which will be open through the summer and early fall. You can find the survey here and email questions or feedback to IPupdate@newbedford-ma.gov.
When combined sewer overflow systems discharge
Combined sewer systems, which are more often found in older cities, are designed such that stormwater and sewage run in the same pipes. When there is heavy rain or significant snowmelt, the system can get overloaded, so combined sewer overflows (CSOs) release some of the untreated sewage and stormwater into local waterways through outfalls so that it doesn’t back up into homes or public streets.
When the weather is drier and there is no need for overflow, the sewage will get transferred to the local wastewater treatment plant, though sometimes there can be releases during dry weather due to malfunctions in the system.
Newer systems have separate piping for stormwater and sewage, but some older cities in Massachusetts, including New Bedford and Boston, are still operating to some degree with the older, combined systems.
According to the EPA, sewage discharges are a “major problem” in the country and cause some bodies of water to remain unsafe for swimming and fishing, with the problem being “especially acute” in New England.
Email Brooke Kushwaha at bkushwaha@newbedfordlight.org.
I thought we had all these csos tied into the sewer treatment system. We had shellfishing in clarks cove , in the outer harbor ,dartmouth and fairhaven.Then suddenly in january of 2023 we have many many shellfish rain closures that you can see on the states shellfish rain closure list.What happened a massive system failure gone uncorrected or a shift in shellfish sanitation policy?
I attended the first meeting and founded it very informative .I wish more residents would take interest.It is a problem [ a expensive problem ] we must chip away at it !
Any ideas would be appreciated . Would large temporary holding tanks be feasible until separate pipes can be installed ? Also how many residential and industrial roof drains are tied into the system ?
Local towns & schools that are tied in should work with us , maybe installing their own retention ponds !
Thank you for your sensible suggestions.
I am a life long New Bedford resident and shared this information earlier this year at the meeting at the Sewerage Treatment Plant and I will share it again here. Should be noted there are 27 CSO’s – outfall pipes that have never been addressed and remain open to this day.
I would like to see more done on our peninsula to keep our water and beaches cleaner and reopen our shellfish beds. Any time there is a major rain event we still have thousands of gallons of raw sewerage that pour into the Acushnet River, Clarks Cove, and Buzzard Bays.
It has been over 30 years since the Sewerage Treatment was built and at that time there were some design cuts made due to lack of funding. The cuts included the removal of a plan to shut down and cap all the outfall pipes (CSO’s) and build an overflow system holding tank (that would hold sewerage overflows till the storm passed and than release the sewerage back to the plant for treatment).
The closing and capping of the outfall pipes (CSO’s) and building a overflow system holding tank would be a big help in cleaning our waters, beaches, and reopening our shellfish beds. With thousands of quahogs out there it could create a lot of jobs for this area, and be a boost to our economy. The map at the link below shows what our sewerage problems have done to our area (it’s all in bright red for Prohibited / Closed).
https://buzzardsbay.org/enjoy-buzzards-bay/shellfish/shellfish_closures_buzzards_bay/
It is very disappointing that the city has decided “to spend a smaller percentage of its resources on reducing CSOs and more on infrastructure repairs and maintenance.” New Bedford CSO discharges are shutting down shellfish beds to harvest from Mattapoisett to Dartmouth with every significant rainfall that happens. They also impact other uses of the bay, e.g. cancelling the Buzzards Bay Coalition’s annual Buzzards Bay Swim fund raiser in 2024. The City has done a good job of remediating many CSOs but the remaining 27 are still regularly flowing, with the top five responsible for 75% of the total annual raw sewage discharge. New Bedford needs to prioritize the correction of these five CSOs at the top of the list as a new plan is developed for upgrading the sewage infrastructure.
Thank you for this sensible suggestion.
To much fluoride and other chemicals are hurting people’s guts.
Come on. Is this really a sewer issue? How about a campaign for 6th graders about how chemicals for green lawns flush into the harbor, and how stormwater tie-ins push sewerage into the bay. Unleash the power of youth. Let little kids explain to their parents how growing green grass or solving a homeowner stormwater problem with a sneaky sewer tie-in really hurts the Bay. Lets spend tax money on fixing roads and other fundamentals.
New Bedford built a multi-million dollar walkway over the dike so its citizens could view the sewage filled waters instead of investing the money in the sewage system. Make that make sense.
New Bedford can reduce costs and improve reliability by focusing on a mix of “high-impact, lower-cost” upgrades rather than relying on a massive tunnel or pipe-replacement projects. The city already has a long-term combined sewer overflow (CSO) reduction plan and has invested more than $460 million since the 1990s, reducing overflow volumes by roughly 90 percent.
Some of the most cost-effective next steps are:
1. Green infrastructure instead of only bigger pipes
Nature-based systems are often cheaper per gallon managed than fully rebuilding underground sewer networks. New Bedford has already identified rain gardens, bioswales, permeable pavement, urban tree planting, and green roofs as priority tools.
Examples:
o Convert large paved municipal lots and schoolyards into permeable surfaces.
o Add curbside bioswales in flood-prone neighborhoods like the South End.
o Expand tree canopy to absorb runoff and reduce peak stormwater flow.
o Require new developments to retain stormwater onsite.
Benefits:
o Reduces sewage overflows during storms.
o Cuts flooding.
o Costs less than full pipe replacement.
o Improves heat resilience and neighborhood appearance simultaneously.
2. Targeted sewer separation rather than citywide replacement is a more affordable approach:
o Prioritize the worst overflow districts first.
o Separate sewers block-by-block during scheduled road reconstruction projects.
o Focus on areas contributing the highest pollution loads to the harbor.
Cities like Cambridge, Somerville, and Fitchburg are using phased separation projects to spread costs over decades.
3. Smart sewer monitoring and predictive maintenance
Installing sensors and modern control systems is relatively inexpensive compared with excavation projects.
Technologies include:
o Real-time flow meters.
o AI-assisted storm prediction.
o Remote-controlled gates and pumps.
o Leak and blockage detection.
These systems help utilities:
o Prevent backups.
o Optimize existing pipe capacity.
o Reduce emergency repair costs.
o Delay expensive expansion projects.
4. Inflow and infiltration reduction
A surprisingly large amount of stormwater enters sewer systems through cracked pipes, illegal sump-pump connections, and deteriorated manholes.
Lower-cost fixes include:
o Pipelining instead of full replacement.
o Sealing manholes.
o Disconnecting roof drains.
o Offering homeowner incentives to redirect sump pumps.
This can dramatically reduce wet-weather flows without replacing entire systems.
5. Distributed stormwater storage
Instead of building giant underground storage tunnels, New Bedford could add many smaller storage systems:
o Underground modular tanks beneath parks or parking lots.
o Detention basins.
o Constructed wetlands.
o Dual-use recreational flood areas.
Smaller distributed systems are often easier to finance incrementally and are more resilient to climate-change-driven storms.
6. Aggressively pursue state and federal funding
New Bedford has received substantial loan forgiveness through the Massachusetts Clean Water Trust and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law programs.
The city can continue leveraging:
o EPA State Revolving Fund loans.
o FEMA climate resilience grants.
o Federal infrastructure law funding.
o Environmental justice grants.
o NOAA coastal resilience programs.
Since much of New Bedford qualifies as an environmental justice area, it is well-positioned to receive grant funding focused on climate adaptation and public health.
7. Coordinate sewer upgrades with road and utility work
One of the cheapest strategies is timing sewer projects alongside:
o Road resurfacing.
o Water-main replacement.
o Lead-pipe removal.
o Broadband or utility trenching.
Sharing excavation and restoration costs can significantly reduce total project expense.
8. Public-private stormwater incentives
The city could reduce runoff without paying for everything itself by:
o Offering stormwater fee credits for green roofs and retention systems.
o Requiring large commercial properties to manage runoff onsite.
o Using redevelopment projects to modernize drainage infrastructure incrementally.
A realistic “best value” strategy for New Bedford would probably combine:
• targeted sewer separation,
• green infrastructure,
• smart monitoring,
• pipe rehabilitation,
• and aggressive grant funding.
That hybrid approach is usually far cheaper and faster than attempting to replace a 160-year-old combined sewer system all at once.
Stop with the nonsense and after a major rain event go down to any of the beaches and you’ll see the raw sewerage in our waters, on our shores, and the seagulls picking at it. Nothing is being done, it has been 30 years since the sewerage treatment plant was built, and there are still 27 CSO’s out fall pipes that have not been closed. Again to this day every time a major rain event happens we still have millions of gallons of untreated sewerage pour into Clark’s Cove, Acushnet River, and Buzzards Bay that close our waters and beaches.
Thank you so much for these very constructive suggestions.