A stinky situation in Massachusetts is starting to irritate the senses of politicians in Hartford.
In recent months, Connecticut lawmakers have pointed fingers at their northern neighbor — and each other — over the issue of sewer systems overflowing into the Connecticut River, which runs through the middle of both states on its way to Long Island Sound.
Fed up with complaints from constituents about raw sewage floating down the river, Reps. Tami Zawistowski, R-East Granby, and Devin Carney, R-Lyme, wrote to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month asking it to intervene to improve water quality monitoring, discharge alerts and the outdated infrastructure responsible for sending millions of gallons of “contaminated water” into the river.
Those comments drew a rebuke from Democrats, who accused their colleagues of painting an inaccurate picture of the problem.
Overflows are usually triggered by heavy rains that overwhelm outdated sewer and wastewater infrastructure, they noted. The resulting discharge, while it may contain some untreated sewage, is mostly made up of rain.
“As residents of this district know all too well, the Connecticut River has a history of becoming unsafe for swimming and fishing, particularly after significant rainstorms,” Rep. John Santanella, D-Enfield, said in a press release. “That is a longstanding fact. But what is not true are the exaggerated claims suggesting that millions of gallons of raw sewage are being dumped into the river during these weather events.”
If you’re wondering what causes sewer overflows, and whether you should be worried about their impact on water quality, here’s what to know.
Why are sewer pipes overflowing?
When the first municipal wastewater systems were developed during the 1800s, they collected everything from household sewage and industrial waste to rainwater into a single network of pipes which then deposited that untreated mix into the nearest river or other body of water.
The next century saw the development of treatment plants to clean wastewater prior to discharge. These combined sewer systems, however, still may become overwhelmed during large storms, necessitating additional overflow pipes to prevent the mixture of sewage and rain from backing up and flooding local homes and businesses.
Historically, Connecticut had as many as 13 combined sewer systems that would occasionally spill over into local waterways.
In 1987, the state established the Clean Water Fund within the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to assist municipalities with wastewater projects. Since then, the state has invested more than $5.3 billion to reduce the number of combined systems down to four: Hartford, which discharges into the Connecticut River, and Norwich, Bridgeport and New Haven, which release into local rivers and the Sound.
Additionally, the mostly-separated wastewater systems in Waterbury and Norwalk have a small number of locations from which overflows still occur.
The remaining combined systems are required to submit plans to DEEP outlining what steps they are taking to reduce overflows. The biggest of those projects currently underway involves digging a four-mile-long tunnel in South Hartford capable of holding 41 million gallons of storm-related overflows. Afterwards, that wastewater will be slowly released from the tunnel into the city’s sewage treatment facility.
The tunnel project is expected to be completed next year at a cost of over $500 million.
How often do they overflow?
Connecticut’s combined wastewater systems discharged more than 1.2 billion gallons of wastewater overflows in 2024, according to data collected by DEEP.
The state’s largest source of overflows is the combined system in Hartford, which released 796.8 million gallons of wastewater into the Connecticut River last year. That was more than the entire volume of overflows reported by three systems in Massachusetts that also discharge wastewater into the river: Chicopee, Holyoke and Springfield.
Local critics, however, have pointed to ongoing improvement efforts, such as the Hartford tunnel project, to argue that Connecticut is taking a more proactive approach toward minimizing overflows.
“I feel a little more confident doing more finger pointing now because Connecticut is ahead of Massachusetts,” Zawistowski said.
Will Healey, a spokesman for DEEP, called overflows a “state, regional, and national issue,” and said the agency is working closely with its counterparts in Massachusetts as well as the EPA’s regional offices in Boston to reduce their impact along the Connecticut River.
In western Massachusetts, officials currently have $15.2 million invested in sewer separation projects and upgrades to water treatment facilities, according to Fabienne Alexis, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.
“Through municipal partnerships and billions of dollars in investments, we are working to update aging infrastructure, construct underground storage, and expand nature-based solutions to mitigate stormwater impacts,” Alexis said. “These projects are expensive and proposed federal funding cuts unfortunately threaten long-awaited progress to eliminate combined sewer overflows.”
Should I be concerned?
While most of the discharge from overflows is made up of rain, officials do caution that the presence of untreated sewage and other pollutants raises serious environmental and public health concerns.
“You do not want to go in the water when there’s combined sewer overflows happening because there’s untreated, or partially treated sewage going in,” said Bill Lucey, the Soundkeeper for the environmental nonprofit Save the Sound.
In addition to the risks for humans, Lucey said that the overflows from combined systems can lead to harmful algae blooms or an excess of nitrogen and other nutrients in Long Island Sound.
For years, he said, the group has been pushing lawmakers to approve funding for an electronic alert system that will notify swimmers, fishermen and boaters whenever an overflow has impacted water quality within a specific area. Similar systems already exist in New York and Massachusetts.
DEEP currently publishes information about sewer overflows on its website as well as the social media platform X.
Zawistowski said the overarching concern from her constituents has to do with visible amounts of sewage floating down the river, and occasionally washing up in areas such as the Windsor Locks Canal State Park.
“It’s been a problem for years, but its being paid attention to now,” she said.