Plant OK’d $18M in upgrades after ’06 pollution suit
The feds filed a civil action against operators of a North Andover wastewater treatment plant on the Merrimack River 11 years ago to the day a howling storm knocked out power to the site Monday.
The Greater Lawrence Sanitary District agreed to spend $18 million on upgrades to the plant to protect the Merrimack and Spicket rivers from being regularly polluted by raw sewage as part of a consent decree resulting from the legal action in federal court in Boston.
The agreement stemmed from a lawsuit brought against GLSD by the Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The civil action was filed by the feds on Oct. 30, 2006, 11 years to the day before Tropical Storm Philippe knocked out power to the plant and its pumping station Monday.
The outage deflected millions of gallons of untreated sewage and storm water from five Massachusetts and New Hampshire cities and towns into the river over a period of 13 hours, largely unbeknownst to 600,000 people who rely on the Merrimack for their drinking water.
EPA and MassDEP sued the now 40-year-old plant more than a decade ago for violating the Clean Water Act by failing to comply with its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.
The complaint claimed that from October 1996 forward, GLSD, when overwhelmed by rainfall, would discharge into the rivers untreated wastewater containing “excessive quantities of fecal coliform bacteria” approximately 14 times a year at a rate of 111 million gallons per year “indicating a significant human health risk.”
The Spicket River is a tributary of the Merrimack.
The improvements ordered by Saris included increasing flow capacity at the pump station, construction of new headwork facilities and construction of new disinfection and dechlorination facilities.
U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris also fined GLSD $254,000 — half to be paid to the feds and half to the state.