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2024 was supposed to be Mattapoisett oyster farmer Mike Ward’s biggest year yet. He planned to scale up production on his four-acre Nasketucket Bay farm, ahead of selling it and retiring in 2026.
But Ward’s farm, Mattapoisett Oysters, suffered more than 180 days of state-imposed emergency closures last year, after rains caused raw sewage to repeatedly spill from New Bedford’s combined sewer system into Buzzards Bay. Now, his plans to sell are on hold.
“I think it’s worth zero right now, except for my equipment,” Ward said.
Ward wasn’t the only local oyster farmer whose plans were disrupted by New Bedford’s combined sewer overflows last year.
West Island Oysters co-owner Dale Leavitt was looking to boost production on his 46-acre Nasketucket Bay farm. Now, his Fairhaven business is “running on fumes” after experiencing more than 180 days of emergency closures.
In Dartmouth, Scott Soares was looking to grow his half-acre Padanaram Oyster Farm in Apponagansett Bay. Roughly half of his farm income was wiped out by 210 days of emergency closures.
Since January 2024, emergency shellfish bed closures have presented an urgent threat to oyster aquaculture in Buzzards Bay.
The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries implemented an unprecedented 20 emergency closures in the area last year. They happen after rains cause New Bedford’s sewer pipes to overflow and pollute local waters with untreated sewage.
Massachusetts fisheries managers say these closures protect consumers from the risk of illness. Eating shellfish contaminated with untreated sewage may lead to gastrointestinal illness, hepatitis, and — in some cases — death.
“We have to make sure public health is paramount,” said DMF deputy director Bob Glenn.
DMF has been enacting emergency closures more regularly in local growing areas since 2022, when a state law went into effect that requires combined sewer operators (including the City of New Bedford) to disclose raw sewage spills when they occur.
These sewage-related emergency closures have prevented roughly eight oyster growers in Apponagansett and Nasketucket bays from consistently harvesting and selling their product. The local oyster aquaculture industry brought in roughly $1 million worth of commercial landings in 2023.
Local oyster growers are frustrated. Aquaculture has coexisted with New Bedford’s combined sewer system for decades in the area without any reports of illness tied to local shellfish.
The oyster farmers add that the DMF’s decisions to close these beds are not being made with data reflecting the actual health risk from shellfish at their farms. The agency is issuing blanket closures of growing areas based on data from combined sewer overflow valves and formulas.
“I would like to see the specificity around what causes those closures, rather than what seems like speculation,” Soares said.
The National Shellfish Sanitation Program mandates emergency shellfish closures of 7 to 21 days if untreated or partially treated sewage spills into local shellfish growing areas. Strict program thresholds determine the size of the closures. The oyster growers say DMF should push back on this mandatory closure guidance.
DMF officials sympathize with local growers’ concerns. They have been working with growers to conduct testing on their farms that could sometimes allow them to reopen earlier. But they say they don’t have the capacity to test all local shellfish operations for contamination every time rain causes a closure.
The officials agree that the National Shellfish Sanitation Program standards are strict — but they won’t push back on them. They say objecting to the standards would risk access to interstate commerce for all Massachusetts aquaculture, a roughly $50 million industry. They say public health must come first.
How New Bedford’s sewer overflows lead to oyster-bed closures
Most of New Bedford’s roughly 300-mile combined sewer system handles stormwater and sewage in the same pipes. It has 27 relief valves that discharge untreated sewage and stormwater into the Acushnet River, the New Bedford Harbor and Clarks Cove when the pipes exceed capacity during rains.
These events — called combined sewer overflows, or CSOs — protect the city’s treatment plant from potential failures, and keep sewage from backing up into homes and businesses. But bacteria and viruses from raw sewage in the discharge can pollute surrounding waters.
Oysters and other bivalve shellfish are vulnerable to contamination from bacteria, viruses, and chemicals while filter-feeding. So FDA officials, state fisheries managers and shellfish industry members developed mandates in the National Shellfish Sanitation Program requiring emergency shellfish bed closures if untreated or raw sewage is spilled into local growing areas.
The closures apply to growing areas where concentrations of fecal coliform units exceed 14 per 100 milliliters of water. That standard represents the FDA’s “current thinking on… the requirements which are minimally necessary for the sanitary control of molluscan shellfish.”
Before 2024, DMF implemented emergency closures only after voluntary notification from New Bedford about a CSO, or after massive CSO discharges spilled into surrounding waters due to an intense storm.
In 2022, The City of New Bedford began installing CSO flow meters and sensors. In 2023, it began regularly disclosing its flow volumes and discharge times.
There were roughly 50 days between July and December 2022 in which storms triggered CSOs in New Bedford. In 2023, there were 125 days in which storms triggered CSOs in New Bedford. Both years, storms put hundreds of millions of gallons of discharge into the water.
The number and volume of the discharges surprised DMF officials. They began instituting frequent emergency closures in 2024 as a result.
DMF has been conducting fecal coliform bacteria sampling at select CSO valves in New Bedford when they go off. It has developed formulas to determine how far these emergency closures should stretch, using variables like the volume of water in growing areas, volume of discharge from a given CSO, and tide and wind directions.
Agency leaders say their formulas cannot predict with certainty if local oysters are contaminated. “There’s a certain degree of best professional judgment,” said DMF shellfish program leader Christian Petitpas.
Can the state reopen shellfish beds faster?
The shellfish bed closures last 21 days by default.
After seven days of closures, however, DMF can test for levels of a fecal coliform viral proxy in these shellfish beds on the eighth day. They can reopen them on the ninth day if the testing indicates viral levels do not exceed federal standards.
DMF officials have ramped up efforts to provide this testing and reopen growers earlier. However, they can only run the testing in DMF’s Newburyport laboratory, roughly two hours north. Staff and laboratory capacity is also limited. So it can often take more than nine days.
Local agency leaders are developing a local shellfish testing lab in New Bedford, which will help them test and reopen shellfish beds more promptly. While they hoped to have it up and running in 2024, it is not operational yet.
Petitpas said the DMF will put in an application for grant funding for a set of buoy sensors in local oyster farms, which will detect for a proxy of fecal coliform bacteria in surrounding waters.
That could help DMF fine-tune its closures after CSOs and keep unaffected local shellfish farms open. Woods Hole Sea Grant has leased a buoy sensor, and DMF will work with Woods Hole on a trial sampling period in coming months.
Growers have been working with DMF to get that buoy sensor project funded, and lobbying the state legislature for funding to improve DMF’s laboratory testing capacity, Leavitt said.
They have also initiated a research program to try to counter some of the mandatory National Shellfish Sanitation Program guidance.
It’s unclear whether the growers can submit data to the FDA to relax the program’s emergency closure standard, Leavitt said. The growers are working with attorneys at the Roger Williams University Law School to examine the question. They should have an answer this spring.
Petitpas of DMF said the large number of closures occurred during a drought year in 2024. She is worried what may happen as climate change brings wetter conditions to the area.
New Bedford has spent $470 million to reduce sewer overflows
Since the 1990s, New Bedford has invested more than $470 million in 2024 dollars to upgrade its stormwater and wastewater systems. The upgrades address Clean Water Act requirements, under Environmental Protection Agency oversight. They include CSO remediation.
The city has reported a 94% reduction in CSO discharge. It has closed 11 valves and separated over 350 acres of combined sewer area.
New Bedford is spending an additional $500-plus million in 2024 dollars from 2017 through 2037 on projects in an EPA-approved plan to improve its wastewater and stormwater infrastructure. About half of that will go to remediating CSOs, particularly to reducing the frequency and volume of discharges to Clarks Cove.
After the projects in that plan are complete, the city will still need to separate many miles of combined sewer lines. It has not yet developed plans to close more CSO valves.
The City of New Bedford is not changing its plans because of the emergency shellfish bed closures, New Bedford Department of Public Infrastructure Commissioner Jamie Ponte wrote in a message to The Light. The city also needs to meet other Clean Water Act obligations, which require significant resources and time to implement.
“While the City would like to accomplish more over a shorter period, the disturbance to the residents and businesses of the City needs to be considered as well as the financial obligations of the rate payers,” Ponte said.
Oyster growers shift toward survival
Growers’ options to address these emergency closures will take time to develop. So their attention has shifted towards survival.
Soares of Padanaram Oyster Farm is looking to turn his operation to a shellfish dealership, that will allow him to harvest his oysters during open days, and sell from storage during closed days.
Ward of Mattapoisett Oysters thinks he’ll be harvesting 25% of his normal allotment of oysters, at most.
One section of Nasketucket Bay hasn’t been affected by emergency CSO closures as frequently as others, Leavitt said. He said he and other growers recently persuaded the Mattapoisett Select Board to give them each a small allotment of beds in that area.
That way, if they anticipate a closure, they can relay oysters to those less-impacted waters, and harvest through it.
Email climate and environment reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@newbedfordlight.org.
If farmers want to sell poopy oysters, they should be allowed to sell to family and friends
Growing up in NewBedford from my birth in 1942 until 1973, I remember the obnoxious orders emanating from Clark’s Cove. It’s 2025 and the problem persists, outrageous. With the technology available today one would expect that the problem would be solved especially give the multi-millions of dollars the city as spent at remediation.
I remember years ago seeing a report on 60 minute in which sewage went through a process resulting in waste water that was so pure that the reporter drank it. Why can’t that happen with New Bedfords sewage?
It can happen, but treating sewage to potable (drinking) quality is expensive and intensive and it would make no sense to discharge that to the sea. It should be used. The issue here is the overflows that occur when stormwater is added to the treatment plant during major precipitation events. Also, potable treatment is not necessarily odor free. It is true that there are scrubbers and other technology that can reduce odor. Why it is not happening in New Bedford, I don’t know.
The City of New Bedford, under Mayor Mitchell’s leadership, wishes to further develop industrial growth within the city. This will further deplete water resources and increase pollution into Buzzards Bay. Think!
I was born in 1949 in NB, lived in the South End and spent lots of time around the water. After graduation in Biology in 1971 I worked for the city as the first chemist at the soon to be completed waste water treatment plant. Conditions in the sewer system were beyond deplorable, but I don’t remember people dying in the streets. Things have greatly improved and still have a long way to go. The separation of 130 miles of combined sewer is a costly venture. The excuse of not having enough people to run analysis is pretty poor. It is a pretty simple test and could be done locally.There is a new treatment facility at Ft Rodman and most likely other facilities capable of running the test. Give these Aquaculture people a break and provide the services to help them.