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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.