Heavy rains pack a second punch, undermining sewage treatment

WINTHROP, Mass. --Massachusetts residents already deluged by historic rainfalls faced a second problem Monday, as wastewater treatment plants along the Merrimack River started to fail, dumping raw sewage that threatened to contaminate passers-by and fishing areas.

In Haverhill, a 42-inch main carrying wastewater to a treatment plant broke Sunday night, sending sewage into the Merrimack at a rate of 35 million gallons a day. Gov. Mitt Romney said a permanent repair will require replacement of about two miles of line, with the work being done by crews from as far away as New Jersey.

A temporary fix -- the installation of 3,200 feet of overland pipe to bypass the break -- will not be completed until Wednesday.

Romney also said that just upstream in Lawrence, a regional wastewater treatment plant serving the city, Andover, North Andover and Salem, N.H., was at risk of being shut down because floodwaters were threatening its power plant. That could spill an additional 115 million gallons per day of untreated wastewater into the river.

And in Lowell, whose famous mills were once powered by the roaring Merrimack, flood waters threatened the city's drinking water treatment plant. The governor said the city had a 24-hour reserve and was exploring alternate supplies from neighboring communities.

Officials in Lawrence and Lowell downplayed the threats Monday, saying the cities' plants were holding.

"This amount of flow is something you just can only dream about. I mean, it's almost to the point where you're getting two of each kind of animal and putting them in their boats," Romney said during a news conference at the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority's Deer Island sewage treatment plant.

Deer Island, which serves 43 communities from Wilmington to Stoughton and west to Framingham, was itself imperiled by the heavy rains. It has been operating at capacity since midday Saturday, processing 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater daily. Normally, it treats 350 million gallons of wastewater each day.

"The longer you run at full capacity, you run the risk of something happening," said Fred Laskey, the MWRA's executive director.

Romney said the pollution in the Merrimack was being diluted by the surge of rainwater rushing along the riverbanks. At the same time, drinking supplies downstream were not threatened because none had intakes on the river.

However, the governor warned residents -- especially children -- to avoid playing in the river or nearby tributaries to avoid contamination. He also expressed concern about the viability of fishing and shellfish beds at the river's outfall in Salisbury, and dispatched the state Department of Environmental Protection for monitoring.

"The DEP will be taking soundings and evaluating whether, in fact, the dilution factor is high enough to keep serious environmental damage from occurring, or whether, in fact, we have damage that we'll need to take corrective action," Romney said.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., toured hard-hit Peabody, a North Shore city whose downtown was flooded by the relentless rain. He labeled it "the worst flooding I've seen in 22 years in the Senate" and lambasted Bush and Romney -- both Republicans -- for failing to provide necessary infrastructure funding.

"I talked about combined sewer overflow and these kinds of issues during the (2004 presidential) campaign and people would roll their eyes, but this is it," Kerry said.

Kerry said mitigation is needed to help communities such as Peabody survive, because they are already losing businesses that cannot exist with repeated flooding.

"I think it's really critical that this be dealt with by widening and deepening the rivers, providing flues and alternative river runs," the senator said. "It will cost a number of millions of dollars to do, but in the long run, the estimate is that $130 million has been lost in recent years because of loss of business and loss of revenue to the city of Peabody."

Romney vetoed $5.6 million in flooding mitigation money for the city in 2004, saying he did not have sufficient information to justify the expenditure.

"What the governor vetoed were state matching funds for a federal grant that had not been awarded," said Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney's communications director. He said the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency has since worked with the city to qualify for the federal grants, but they still have not been awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Army Corps of Engineers.

"We will continue to work with them to get these necessary federal dollars," Fehrnstrom said.