| Wastewater | Deer Island, Boston Harbor - Page 11 |
| Draft Environmental Impact Statements |
| To be eligible to receive the 75 percent federal funding for the projects the next step for both the metropolitan sewage plan from Metcalf & Eddy and the sludge plan from Havens & Emerson was to have Draft Environmental Impact Statements (DEIS) written. These preliminary reports contain a full description of the affected environment, a reasonable range of alternatives, and an analysis of the impacts of each alternative. Affected individuals have the opportunity to provide feedback through written and public hearing statements. Based on the comments on the DEIS, the EPA writes the final Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) and then announces its proposed action. |
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The H&E sludge report had been completed in August 1973. The EPA sent it to EcolSciences, Rockaway, N.J., for a DEIS. The firm had just recently been formed and was one of a new generation of environmental consulting companies whose specialties included writing Environmental Impact statements for the EPA. Their DEIS was published in February of 1976. They rubber stamped the plan to incinerate all the sludge on Deer Island with the only change being what to do with the ash. Instead of pumping it from the incinerators into a lagoon at the end of Deer Island, EcolSciences proposed loading the ash into trailers, barging them across the harbor to Mystic Terminal, then towing them via truck to a landfill in Plainville, Mass. Like environmental consulting, running landfills was also a growing business thanks to new EPA rules. Just constructed in 1974 by the Canadian company Laidlaw, the sanitary landfill in Plainville was designed to protect local groundwater. Conveniently located near the junction of Routes 495 and 95 southwest of Boston, now closed, the landfill had been the largest in the state. |
| The EMMA report on upgrading the entire Boston metropolitan area sewage system had been finalized in June of 1976. For the DEIS the EPA split up the work giving the firm Greeley and Hansen the portion on sewage treatment plants. It was a fitting choice, Greeley and Hansen were the co-authors along with Metcalf & Eddy of the influential 1939 Special Commission report that laid the groundwork for the first sewage treatment plants in the metropolitan area. The form firm started work that fall and submitted their report in August of 1978. |
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Unlike EcolScience which offered few changes to the H&E sludge plan, Greeley and Hansen proposed a different solution from Metcalf & Eddy’s plan for two satellite sewage treatment plants and upgrades to both existing plants on Nut Island and Deer Island. G&H eliminated the idea of building satellite sewage treatment plants and instead, after analyzing all the options, narrowed the options to two. One was to build a new sewage plant for the South Metropolitan System at a location in Quincy known as Broad Meadows to replace the Nut Island plant. Broad Meadows had been a saltwater marsh that had been degraded with material dredged from the Town River. M&E had noted the location but selected upgrading Nut Island as a better option. Under option one, the Deer Island plant would continue to serve the Boston Main Drainage and North Metropolitan systems. A sewage plant was never built on Broad Meadow and after a restoration project begun in 2010, the area was transformed back to being a tidal habitat. Today it is called Passanageset Park. |
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Greeley and Hansen second proposal, and the one they recommended, was to expand the Deer Island plant to serve all the metropolitan sewage systems. In theory the same as what would be built there 25 years later. But what G&H proposed was dissimilar in several ways. The firm was concerned that the reliance on incinerators to dispose of the sludge in the Havens & Emerson would run afoul of evolving EPA clean air standards and face significant public opposition. Their alternative was to offer composting as a solution for what to do with at least some of the sludge the plant would generate. The process would entail mixing the raw sludge with wood chips and piling the result into rows where after aerating for 21-24 days the woodchips would be removed and the remaining material aged for an additional 30 days before being useable as compost. There was not enough room on Deer Island to spread out the sludge so nearby Squantum Point in Quincy was selected as the location. The conversion of sludge to compost, to be used as a soil conditioner, was recommend instead of conversion to fertilizer, a plant food. |
| Complicating the proposal to convert some of the sludge to compost was a study that determined that sewage flowing through the North Metropolitan System was contaminated with toxic metals. It would be difficult to remove and as a result, for composting to be successful only sewage from the South Metropolitan System could be used. G&H’s complicated workaround was to have two sets of aeration and settling tanks on Deer Island. Sewage from the North Metropolitan and Boston Main Drainage system would get treated with its sludge incinerated, hopefully capturing the toxic metals in the ash, and then barged to a landfill on Squantum Point next to the composting facility. About half of the sludge from the South Metropolitan System would be converted to compost at Squantum Point with the remaining sludge digested and dewatered on Deer Island, then also barged to Squantum Point where it would loaded onto trucks and brought to a sanitary landfill. |
| Final Environmental Impact Statements |
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| The final Environmental Impact Statement for the plan to dispose of the sludge generated by the sewage treatment plants was published at the end of March 1979. However, ongoing changes in federal legislation, policy, regulations, and guidelines complicated the decision for the EPA. Nevertheless, the MDC was still obligated to implement an environmentally acceptable solution for disposing of the sludge, and in the view of EPA an incinerator on Deer Island was that solution. A change from the Draft EIS was the elimination of the requirement that wastewater from North and South Metropolitan systems be treated separately. One of the changes in federal guidelines was a loosening in the amount of the heavy metal cadmium that could be applied to soil and still be considered safe. Now the wastewater from the two systems could be combined and treated together saving money and space. What to do with the incinerator ash was still a problem. |
| Another change in federal regulations, this time a tightening, eliminated the solution EcolSciences had proposed for ash. The Plainville landfill was not approved for hazardous waste and the ash from the incinerators might contain hazardous materials. In addition, if the ash was hazardous a special Coast Guard permit would be needed to barge it from Deer Island to Mystic Terminal. The idea of storing the ash on Deer Island was again a recommendation and, because of yet more changes in federal regulations, Spectacle Island was identified as another improved location for a landfill. This despite needing the Coast Guard permit for the barging of ash that might be hazardous. |
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| Assurances from the EPA that the emissions from the incinerator smokestacks would never exceed National Ambient Air Quality Standards was of little comfort to the citizens of Winthrop. That those standards would often change was a problem as was the argument by the EPA that while there were violations of the overall air quality standards in the Boston metropolitan area, the incinerators would result in no new violations. Oddly, the reverse of that logic was used to eliminate the concept of satellite treatment plants on the Charles and Neponset Rivers. Despite that the fact that the plants’ effluent discharge would be cleaner than the existing polluted river water, it was determined that because it added any additional pollution it was not acceptable. |
| NOTES |
| Proposed Sludge Management Plan |
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Draft Environmental Impact Statement, Proposed Sludge Management Plan MDC, Boston, MA, - MDC, Ecolsciences, 1976 - Vol. 1, Vol. 2 - Google Books |
| Upgrading the Boston Metropolitan Area Sewage System |
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Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the Upgrading of the Boston Metropolitan Area Sewage System - MDC, Greeley and Hansen, 1978 - Executive Summary, Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Public Hearing - EPA |
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