Raw sewage released by the City of Holyoke, Mass., has been flowing down the Connecticut River and into Long Island Sound for decades, but that kind of pollution will now be halted under a federal consent decree agreed to by the city.
Connecticut and Massachusetts environmentalists praised the settlement agreement announced Thursday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency but said they want additional federal action to clean up sewage pollution in the river.
“It’s great news,” said Bill Lucey, Connecticut’s Long Island Soundkeeper. “But there’s a lot more than needs to be done.”
Alicia Charamut, the Connecticut steward for the Connecticut River Conservancy, said environmentalists in this state have long been “very dismayed” that the EPA seemed to have much less strict water quality standards for Massachusetts communities like Holyoke than for Connecticut cities and towns along the river.
“By entering into this consent decree, Holyoke will take important and necessary steps to prevent pollutants from entering the Connecticut River,” Andrew E. Lelling, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, said of the new settlement.
Martin Suuberg, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, said Holyoke was the last Connecticut River community in that state to either eliminate or agree to a long-term plan to clean up pollution from sewer overflows.
Most of Holyoke’s sewage during normal weather is sent to the city’s wastewater treatment plant. But environmental complaints filed with the EPA said that from at least 2012 the city has discharged raw sewage directly into the Connecticut River during big rainstorms that resulted in so much stormwater that the sewage system overflowed.
In 2015, Holyoke officials reported the city released an estimated 133 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Connecticut River during wet weather, according to federal officials.
“It’s more than just the pathogens and bacteria,” Charamut said of the pollution problems resulting from untreated sewage running into the Connecticut River. “Nutrients also get released,” she said, explaining that many of those nutrients flow downstream and reach Long Island Sound.
Charamut said those nutrients, which are largely nitrogen, in the sewage feed algae blooms once they reach salt water. Lucey said those blooms “suck up all the oxygen” from the water and leave broad “dead zones” where the Sound’s marine life can’t survive.
Nitrogen pollution coming into Long Island Sound – and the high costs of cleaning it up – has been a major environmental issue in southern New England for years.
“Any community discharging [untreated sewage] into the Connecticut River is adding to the nitrogen load,” Lucey said.
According to Lucey, there are state, federal and environmental groups now working to monitor nitrogen levels along the Connecticut River and at the point where it flows into Long Island Sound.
Andrew Fisk, executive director of the Connecticut River Conservancy, called the federal consent decree with Holyoke “long overdue.” He also said the settlement would mean federal and Massachusetts funding will be made available to help Holyoke pay for the expensive improvements needed to its sewage system.
“This work is very expensive,” Charamut said. She added that Connecticut “has a very generous grant program” to help communities in this state pay for improvements to halt sewage overflows into rivers and streams.
Springfield, which two years ago was still pumping hundreds of thousands of pounds of sewage pollution into the Connecticut River, has also agreed to a long-term plan to halt its sewer system overflows.
Lucey and other Connecticut environmentalists say existing federal nitrogen-release limits for Holyoke, Springfield and other Massachusetts communities along the Connecticut River may still be too lenient.
Gregory B. Hladky can be reached at ghladky@courant.com.
