Opinion:Sewage overflows are a call for collaboration, not conflict

When most people flush the toilet, they don’t linger to think about where it all goes.

Behind the scenes, the people running wastewater treatment plants work tirelessly on one of the most important yet underappreciated public services. Treatment systems only make headlines when things go wrong, such as in recent months when unlucky Connecticut residents have been subjected to the sights and smells of sewage floating down the Connecticut River. Incidents like these are becoming more common as aging wastewater treatment plant infrastructure struggles to keep up with increased demand.

Across Connecticut and the entire eastern United States, vital steps to replace and update our old wastewater treatment plants are underway; however, updating the pipes and buildings alone will not be enough. We must rethink the whole management structure and soon — before the problem gets much worse.

Many overflows come from an old model of combined sewage-stormwater systems. For these systems, a heavy storm can overwhelm infrastructure, leading to the release of sewage. In recent years, Connecticut has taken steps forward, moving from over a dozen combined systems down to only four; Hartford’s MDC facility is one of the remaining combined systems.

In response to recent overflow events, some Connecticut state representatives have argued that these overflows are mostly rainwater, and much of the resulting public health advice is to avoid swimming or fishing for a few days before returning to normal. This advice suggests that the effects of a sewage outflow are fleeting — which may protect us from E. coli and algal blooms — but neglects the slower, growing threat of chemical contamination.

My research focuses on chemical contamination of water in the environment. Untreated sewage often contains industrially produced chemical contaminants like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), suspected to increase risk of cancer and pregnancy complications based on studies by the National Institute of Health. After being deposited from the overflow, these chemicals degrade very slowly and can remain in the water column for decades. Each outflow event adds another drop in the bucket of chemical contamination that affects our waters, fish, and eventually, us.

The situation will only become more dire as intensified storms, rising sea levels, and increasingly common extreme weather, pushes our wastewater systems beyond their limits.

There has been finger-pointing and blame over contamination of the Connecticut river across the Connecticut and Massachusetts state line. Rather than squabbling, now is the time to focus on cross-border cooperation.

To begin, we need updated infrastructure. This is already underway and Connecticut wastewater treatment plants have made strong progress towards repairing aging systems. But the next important step is developing regional cooperation along ecological boundaries rather than political ones.

The Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments offers a model for a path forward: a coalition of municipalities that allows them to prepare for the changing landscape of wastewater by creating a shared, concrete plan for infrastructure, communication, and collaboration. But rivers do not abide by our state boundaries; we must expand this coalition model to include both Connecticut and Massachusetts. We can treat this issue the same way we handle threats to the Long Island Sound, as a team.

We are already investing billions of dollars into updating our wastewater infrastructure. Now is the time to rethink how we manage our collective wastewater systems — together. Consequences of these overflows remain far longer than the wastewater itself. Nothing we flush away ever really disappears, and neither will the consequences of our inaction.

Fiona Quin Zabel lives in Willimantic.