ACTION ALERT: Show your support for more testing after a CSO event!
Let’s set a precedent for more testing and financial assistance for local cities to reduce combined sewer overflow (CSO) discharges!
Today, the House of Representatives is voting on the Economic Development Bond Bill. Please encourage your legislators to support this amendment to set a precedent for more testing after a combined sewer overflow (CSO) event.
Amendment #363, filed by Representative Tram Nguyen of Andover, would create a statewide precedent for more testing after a combined sewer overflow event. This amendment will provide crucial help for communities that border on the Merrimack while encouraging the state to steer more financial assistance to local cities struggling to pay for the infrastructure upgrades needed to reduce CSO discharges.
CSOs threaten public health. Help us secure a safe future by urging your legislators to support this amendment.
Please call or email your legislator and urge them to support these amendments!
Here’s a template of what to say:
SUBJECT: Urgent Action Needed: Support Amendment 363
Dear Representative _____,
I am reaching out to you today to ask for your support of Amendment 363, filed by Representative Tram Nguyen of Andover.
This amendment addresses an urgent health and environmental issue in the Merrimack River Valley – combined sewer overflows, or CSOs. This amendment will provide crucial help for communities that border on the Merrimack River – such as Lowell, Andover, Methuen, Lawrence, Salisbury and Newburyport – by requiring that the DEP conduct greatly enhanced monitoring of sewage pollution levels in the Merrimack and other rivers across Massachusetts where CSOs occur. It will also encourage the state to steer more financial assistance to local cities that are struggling to pay for the infrastructure upgrades that are needed to reduce CSO discharges.
These sewage discharges have a significant impact on the health of people who live in the Merrimack Valley. A recent study by Boston University found that admissions to Merrimack Valley Hospital emergency rooms surge in the days after CSO events occur. Sewage discharges also lead to public beach closures, often on days when thousands of local people are seeking relief from the heat. More than 350,000 people in the Merrimack Valley draw their drinking water from the Merrimack, and the existence of CSOs makes it more complicated and expensive to purify water drawn from the river.
The number and size of CSO events have been growing as climate change causes more precipitation to fall in the Northeast. Last year over 2 billion gallons of CSO-contaminated discharge was released into the Merrimack, nearly 4 times more than the average year.
On a statewide level, we are starting to see that the Merrimack Valley is subjected to a disproportionately large impact from CSOs. The year 2023 marked the first year of the state’s new comprehensive reporting on CSOs, and here in the valley the data is stark – nearly half of all the untreated sewage released statewide is released into the Merrimack. Our problems with CSOs is far greater than the once infamous “dirty water” of Boston Harbor.
Several Merrimack Valley representatives signed on to Rep. Nguyen’s bill (H.868), and that bill is Amendment 363. Please consider supporting this amendment.
Best regards,
_____
