This is also an economic issue. Toxic blooms from stormwater runoff recently threatened the Head of the Charles Regatta, and such conditions will imperil other landmark events and economic development if the MWRA compounds the runoff issue by maintaining its current course on CSOs.
Get The Gavel
A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.
We’ve been here before: When Conservation Law Foundation brought its lawsuit to force the cleanup of Boston Harbor, some members of the media called it a waste of billions of dollars. That faulty notion is reprised in the editorial. Yet today the harbor’s revival proves that clean water investments yield extraordinary returns to our economy, such as a value of ecosystem services estimated between $30 billion and $100 billion.
This is also a matter of the rule of law. MWRA deserves credit for magnificent achievements in cleaning up the harbor over decades. From my experience having enforced the federal Clean Water Act throughout those same decades, I would argue that MWRA’s current approach to CSOs violates both the letter and spirit of the law.
Brad Campbell
President and CEO
Conservation Law Foundation
Boston
The writer is former regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency’s mid-Atlantic region and former commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
Improving water quality presents difficult tradeoffs
Your recent editorial on the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s updated CSO control plan resonated because it recognized what’s driving so much of the public’s emotion: a sincere, shared hope for cleaner, healthier rivers. Those of us who work in water and wastewater feel that same pull. Combined sewer overflows should continue to decline, and this plan was always meant to evolve. The goal — for advocates, MWRA, and our communities — is the same: real improvements in water quality.
The challenge, as your editorial noted, is that progress now requires confronting difficult tradeoffs. After 40 years of major gains, the remaining decisions are more complex — and far more costly. MWRA was created to lead the region’s environmental turnaround, and the MWRA Advisory Board was established alongside it to ensure that those decisions kept affordability in mind — not to block investment but rather to make sure families and communities could sustain it.
When tradeoffs fall directly on households, people deserve clarity about what each dollar accomplishes. MWRA is funded entirely by its communities, which means every dollar becomes a higher sewer bill for the residents who cherish these rivers.
Massachusetts has some of the most engaged, informed residents anywhere. Let’s give them the full story in the formal comment process and trust them to help shape the path forward.
Matthew A. Romero
Executive director
MWRA Advisory Board
Chelsea
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not represent those of the full advisory board.
Agency’s proposal lets the sewage win
The editorial “The MWRA’s tricky balancing act” regurgitates MWRA’s misleading argument for dumping sewage in the Charles River while it misses the heart of the public’s concerns. The agency’s proposal to reclassify the river is no meaningless thing; it’s a permanent concession to have sewage discharged into the Charles forever. The proposal would not only remove any accountability for MWRA to end its discharges. It would actually increase the amount of sewage entering the river in the future as storms worsen. It would be a drastic step backward for a mainstay of Greater Boston that’s taken us decades to bring back to life.
There was no misunderstanding about MWRA, Cambridge, and Somerville’s proposal that has to be “explained” to its critics. The authority faced justified alarm from outraged residents legitimately questioning why we would abandon past cleanup efforts and increase sewage discharges to the river.
The editorial paints solutions as impossible and unrealistic. But the Boston Harbor cleanup — also dismissed as too hard at the time — is now one of metro Boston’s greatest economic wins. Clean water is an investment that pays off.
A sewage-free river is not a pipe dream. It’s what we deserve and what MWRA must deliver.
Emily Norton
Executive director
Charles River Watershed Association
Boston
The proposals on the table from MWRA, Cambridge, and Somerville addressing combined sewer overflows would not get us closer to a swimmable or boatable Charles or Mystic River.
For instance, the proposal does not promise to “eliminate CSOs in the Alewife Brook entirely,” as your editorial claims. It predicts only that there would be no CSOs in a “typical” year of rainfall. So the current proposal essentially guarantees continued releases of CSOs in the Alewife Brook, the Mystic, and the Charles, and probably at an even greater level than now.
As environmental advocates, we understand that costs must be weighed against benefits. But the current proposals provide minimal (and yet to be known) benefits, far less than the editorial asserts.
Massachusetts residents deserve more information and a transparent public process where they can weigh in on whether the costs are worth the benefits for treasured public resources.
The headline that appeared over your editorial online asks: “Is making the Charles swimmable worth the cost?”
For our part, the question is: Is freeing our rivers from sewage worth the cost? Our answer remains a resounding yes.
Patrick Herron
Executive director
Mystic River Watershed Association
Arlington
