| Wastewater | Deer Island, Boston Harbor - Page 19 |
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With clever engineering and innovative solutions, the MWRA had come up with a workable plan to provide on aa very size-restricted site secondary treatment for the Boston metropolitan area’s wastewater. The next step in the federally regulated process was for both the MWRA and EPA was to solicit public input on the projects. Both agencies conducted a mix of community meetings, hearings, briefings, distributing copies of the reports, collecting written comments, and then published a “summary of concerns and responses to these concerns” in an additional volume. The MWRA published in March of 1988, the EPA in July. The EPA’s study had only looked at the two tunnels, the inter-island, and the effluent outfall. For the MWRA it was for public response to the two tunnels and their plan for the new Deer Island treatment plant and early site preparation. The hot topic for both agencies was the effluent outfall tunnel. |
| While the MWRA would respond to all the comments they received about the outfall tunnel, it was the EPA that would have to answer for their acceptance of the plan. They had twice rejected the MDC’s 301(h) waiver application for a similar tunnel because it would’ve discharged effluent after only primary treatment. Now the MWRA was offering a similar outfall with the secondary treatment the EPA had wanted. In a favorable coincidence for the MWRA, the consulting engineering firm the EPA had hired to evaluate the outfall proposal was Metcalf & Eddy, the same company the MDC had hired earlier to write their waiver applications. |
| When the MWRA, or the MDC in the past, had proposed something like the siting of a satellite treatment plant or a landfill, typically the opposition would come only from the community impacted. The opposition to the effluent outfall was different, it garnered opposition from a whole range of federal, state, and local elected officials, regulatory agencies, academic institutions, pre-established and ad hoc citizens groups, and the general public. The EPA in their report grouped the opposition to the outfall tunnel into 25 different categories and then systematically discussed each. |
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The issue that received the most comments was titled Site 6. The proposal that the effluent outfall be extended beyond the 9.5 miles off Deer Island the MWRA recommended to 11.5 miles and further to the south. For the groups in communities on the north shore of Massachusetts Bay this was a variation of the classic NIMBY reaction that might be called “the further from my backyard” the better. Though not for the people on Cape Cod who thought it was a bad idea because it meant the outfall would be closer to them. The MWRA in their report had not mentioned a Site 6. They evaluated Sites 2-5 ranging from 4 to 9.5 miles off Deer Island, settling on the most distant Site 5. It was the maximum distance where a gravity-fed would work. Beyond that would requiring pumping and the MWRA concluded that the extra 2.5 miles would provide no benefit in the dispersal of the effluent and would raise the cost significantly. |
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One unorthodox solution offered was simply to raise the treatment plant. Another commenter noted, with some validity to the logic, that the effluent after secondary treatment is considered by the EPA swimmable and perfectly acceptable for discharge into freshwater rivers and lakes, so why not have a shorter and thus cheaper outfall be just two miles off Deer Island? Ocean experts opposed to Site 6 brought up the alarming theory that the outfall’s large volume of warm fresh water entering at that distance might disrupt the Maine Intermediate Water (MIW) layer, something key to the ecological stability of the Gulf of Maine. Those were some of the comments for issue number one, 24 more to go. The EPA gave a detailed response to each but ultimately would not stop the MWRA from digging the tunnel they proposed. A federal law demanded a cleanup, the federal agency responsible, the EPA, had rejected a similar plan on because the effluent would not have received secondary treatment, now it would. And there was a federal judge demanding that his schedule to clean up the harbor be met. |
| A new condition the EPA did place on the MWRA was that it must continue funding research to ensure the outfall was not any causing a problem. An expensive proposition that the MWRA continues to this day, and to this day the outfall tunnel has had no discernable impact on Massachusetts Bay. |
| It appears to have surprised both the EPA and the MRWA that almost no one had any problem with the Inter-Island tunnel. Definitely no one from Quincy was complaining, it meant the closing and ending of a sewage discharge, treated or not from the Nut Island Treatment Plant. As it would turn out it would not be quite that easy to end pollution on Wollaston Beach, but that was in the future. |
| The portion of the MWRA’s public participation report on the treatment plant and early site preparation produced a much more muted response. Winthrop, the one community most impacted by the new treatment had received a significant mitigation settlement. Their concern was more that the MWRA fulfill all the commitments it had made. Massachusetts state officials since the EMMA reports days had argued that fixing problems with combined sewer outlets was more important than big new sewage treatment plants. They grilled the MWRA on Infiltration/Inflow and even came up with exflow/exfiltration as a problem. The MWRA said exfiltration had never been documented as a problem. The rest of that state’s feedback were minor corrections and edits. One usual feedback came from a Nahant group who had been strident in pushing the EPA for a Site 6. They bravely suggested a new layout for the treatment with the obvious goal of having anything to do with sewage treatment moved as far away as possible from Nahant as possible. A fairly classic NIMBY and easily rejected by the MWRA. All of this “public input” was received as part of federal environmental impact statement process, it would not be the last of the “input” the agency received. |
| By the summer of 1988 the MWRA Paul Levy led had an impressive list of accomplishments. The Fore River Shipyard had been purchased providing the area needed for staging construction equipment destined for Deer Island. A contract had been signed for the building of a temporary sludge-to-fertilizer plant at the yard and while it would take another five years before the EPA would accept it, also the final solution of what to do with the sludge. With mitigation money in their coffers both Quincy and Winthrop had agreed to the MWRA plans for their communities. Dick Fox, his team, and Kaiser Engineers and Metcalf & Eddy as CM and LDE were hard at work. The EPA had approved the outfall tunnel plans and finally the state legislature had approved funding of a new prison. And there was a plan for a new sewage treatment plant on Deer Island. |
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While much had been accomplished, it was only on paper. There was no physical evidence that the cleanup of the harbor was underway. That changed on August 10, 1988, when the MWRA staged a groundbreaking on Deer Island attended by federal, state, and local politicians. A Boston Globe headline the next day exclaimed, “$6.1b cleanup of Boston Harbor gets underway.” There were two stories featured, one, “Deer Island groundbreaking first step in 11-year project,” quoted then Governor Michael Dukakis proudly commenting on the state making an “important investment in the future of the harbor.” Inside, the story featured a picture of the governor, who had recently announced that he was running to become president, and his Environmental Affairs Secretary James Hoyt proudly standing at the bow of a boat on their way to the ceremony at Deer Island. |
| The headline of the companion page one story was, “EPA official says Dukakis to blame for 6-year delay.” It quoted Michael Deland the chief of the EPA’s regional office criticizing the Governor and his policies for being the key reason the project was delayed and why Boston metropolitan resident would carry most of the burden of paying for the new treatment plant. The fact that so little had been done to clean up the harbor during the governor’s watch was an effective criticism leveled by presidential candidate George H.W. Bush when he visited Boston less than a month later. Deland, a Republican, would later say that he “probably crossed the line” in his criticism of Dukakis. |
| So, the project was underway. In reality the only construction underway was the building of a new dock and pier. On the peninsula itself there was still an operating prison, a fort constructed with four million pounds of concrete, and two large drumlins that would have to be moved. |
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| After the mid-1988 groundbreaking on Deer Island the next major step taken by the MWRA was its decision in January 1989 to not incinerate the sludge the new plant would produce. Officials of Quincy breathed a qualified breath of relief because the decision meant there would be no incinerator at the Fore River shipyard, but it also meant that the Fore River would be the home of the permanent sludge-to-fertilizer plant. The EPA was not happy with the decision and immediately increased pressure on the MWRA to decide on and purchase a local back up site. That lead to the four-year battle over access to the Walpole site with another court-ordered sewer connection moratorium. The MWRA would hold a groundbreaking ceremony for the sludge-to-fertilizer plant in June 1989. No officials from Quincy attended. |
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The MWRA followed in May 1989 with another decision that it felt was essential to meeting the court ordered deadline and to reducing its exposure to inflationary cost increases resulting from construction delays. However, it was a decision that generated a legal challenge that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme. The Construction Manager for the project, ICF Kaiser, was a union shop and they suggested to the MWRA that it be allowed to sign a no-strike Product Labor Agreement (PLA) with the local Building and Construction Trades Council. They represented the more than 15 international and 25 local unions that worked in the Boston area, many of whom would be working on the project. Without the agreement a disagreement with any one union could spread to a complete work stoppage on the site. With the agreement the unions agreed not to strike. Any grievances would be resolved by neutral professional labor arbitration with their decision binding the MWRA and the unions. |
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For the MWRA the PLA ensured that there would be no work slowdowns resulting from labor disagreements. For the unions it meant all work on the project would be done by union companies or other companies that agreed to union rules and paid union dues. An industry association representing non-union companies filed suit questioning the legality of a public institution, the MWRA, requiring union membership. Rulings flip-flopped for and against the MWRA as the case progressed through courts before finally in 1992 reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. By unanimous decision it ruled in March of 1993 that the MWRA was within its rights to sign the PLA. The agreement was in effect for 10 years and throughout that time over 300 disagreements were settled without a day lost to labor disruption. For the MWRA the no-strike agreement was essential in its efforts to meet the count-ordered and limit inflationary cost increases. However, the decision was controversial. Non-union associations even today blame PLAs for higher construction costs and delays resulting from labor shortages. |
| The MWRA would face another labor-related issue related to its compliance with state and federal law required hiring of minority and women run companies. Trouble arose when it was discovered that some minority subcontractors were merely fronts with only one minority employee. Significant fines were levied on the prime contractor. |
In July of 1989 another portion of the project got underway, this one also not on Deer Island. A former oil rig was brought in, and drilling began in Massachusetts Bay. The first holes were to explore the underground conditions the miners would face constructing the 9-mile outfall tunnel. Next the rig would be used to drill the 55 holes for the riser pipes used to discharge the effluent. The work that had started on Deer Island was what the MWRA had discussed in their 1988 Secondary Treatment Facilities plan. It called for a series of immediate “Fast Track” improvements to the existing treatment plant to ensure that it would continue to operate effectively. Included was replacement of unreliable Nordberg diesel engines with electric motors, a backup electrical generator for the plant (there had been no backup), and the construction of a closed-loop water cooling system needed because the existing reservoir on nearby drumlin was to be eliminated.
It would be September of 1989 when work began on demolishing the bunkers of the old Fort Dawes followed shortly in early 1990 with work moving the center drumlin to its new position between the new plant and Winthrop. What disruption this caused to the inmates of the Deer Island House of Correction is not recorded. It is noted that a plywood fence was installed along the haul road used by construction vehicles. In August of 1990 work began on the outfall tunnel, in December it was construction of the new primary treatment plant, and then in April of 1991 work began on the tunnel connecting Nut Island to Deer Island. |
Then in September of 1991 comes the shock. Paul Levy resigns as executive director effective January 31, 1992. From all account this came as a complete surprise. For political appointees such as Levy there are three typical reasons for leaving a job, with some variations. A person after a long and productive career can simply retire and live in peace and quiet. That wasn’t Levy, he was in his early 40s. Probably a more common reason for a resignation is the lure of a better job. It could be a better job in the public sector, such as Levy’s jump from heading the Department of Public Utilities to the MWRA. Or it could be, and very commonly is, a jump into the private sector, such as becoming a lobbyist. Again, not the case for Levy. It would not be until 2002 that he took a high-profile job as the president and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
The third reason a political appointee “resigns” is because they are forced out. In the MDC era a newly elected governor could, and often did, award one of their supporters with the position as Commissioner. But that was not an option under the MWRA charter. In more than a few cases a political appointee will resign after the news of a scandal becomes public. Sometimes the appointee is embroiled in just too many controversies for the liking of their boss. The MWRA and Levy were a controversy generating machine. In the press at the time the agency seemed beset with problems. Cape Cod residents were up in arms fearing that the effluent that would be discharged from the 9.5-millon outfall tunnel would harm Massachusetts Bay. Walpole residents fighting back on the idea of MWRA residuals dump in their town. And everyone in the metropolitan area were angry about rising water and sewer rates prompting multiple efforts by state legislators to strip the agency of its rate setting authority in MWRA. |
| The third reason a political appointee “resigns” is because they are forced out. In the MDC era a newly elected governor could, and often did, award one of their supporters with the position as Commissioner. But that was not an option under the MWRA charter. In more than a few cases a political appointee will resign after the news of a scandal becomes public. Sometimes the appointee is embroiled in just too many controversies for the liking of their boss. The MWRA and Levy were a controversy generating machine. In the press at the time the agency seemed beset with problems. Cape Cod residents were up in arms fearing that the effluent that would be discharged from the 9.5-millon outfall tunnel would harm Massachusetts Bay. Walpole residents fighting back on the idea of MWRA residuals dump in their town. And everyone in the metropolitan area were angry about rising water and sewer rates prompting multiple efforts by state legislators to strip the agency of its rate setting authority in MWRA. |
| But none of these controversies questioned Levy’s integrity or skill. While he had been a lightning rod for the anger and controversy over the project, he also had been the leader that kept the project on time and on budget. The reason he gave to a Boston Globe reporter for why he was leaving was remarkably ambiguous, “I’m not finding it as challenging as I did in the first few years.” Before he left though, he had one very important card up his sleeve. |
| Sludge discharge stops |
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| There are a number of events that can identified as crucial to the eventual cleanup of Boston Harbor. The passing of the Clean Water Act in 1972 for all practical purposes made it inevitable. The 1975 EMMA reports sponsored by Governor Frank Sargent laid out a regional framework for a solution. One that at the time the federal government would have paid 75% of the cost. Quincy solicitor Bill Golden’s fabled 1982 walk on a polluted Wollaston Beach and the Quincy lawsuit that followed often gets identified as beginning of the end. It could just as well be state Judge Paul Garrity’s ruling leading to the creation of the MWRA in 1984 or federal Judge David Mazzone’s consolidation of all state and local cases. Even Levy’s 1988 groundbreaking on Deer Island highlighted the beginning of construction, albeit only for the dock and pier, could be called the start of the cleanup. But after one specific event the harbor did become dramatically cleaner. |
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On Christmas day, 1991 the Boston Globe ran the headline, “Sludge reaches end of the line.” An accompanying photograph showed Levy and two others in hard hats at the bottom of a pit closing the valve of a massive pipe. Since the early 1900s the channel between the Deer Island and Long Island Head lights had been discharge location first for raw sewage then for partially digested sludge. This was the source of the “black mayonnaise” that covered parts of the harbor. When the discharges were taking place sailors would dread getting becalmed in the smelly brown, bubbling waters. Powered boats would hurry through it. On that day at the end of 1991, meeting a milestone set by Judge Mazzone, the dumping of sludge into Boston Harbor ended. All the sludge generated by the existing and future treatment plant would get pumped into barges and transported to the recently completed sludge-to-fertilizer plant at Fore River. |
| There had been improvements in the quality of the water in harbor thanks to steps the MWRA had taken such as repairing faulty CSOs, identifying illegal sewer hookups, and improved maintenance at existing wastewater facilities. Important steps, and more would follow, however it was stopping the discharge of sludge that within a year would begin to turn people’s opinion around on how clean the harbor was. For most it was the beaches. The numbers of days inner harbor beaches were closed dropped dramatically. So much so that Governor Bill Weld and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino launched a “Back to the Beaches” campaign for 1993. It could be argued that stopping the flow of sludge into the harbor was the single most important step the MWRA took to clean up the harbor. Ironically, almost sadly, it was a step that could have been taken years earlier. |
| Over a dozen names were put forward to replace Levy including a Brigadier General from the Gulf War, directors from public works departments in other parts of the country, heads of different Massachusetts agencies including the Massachusetts Port Authority and MBTA, business executives, city managers, a regional EPA Director, even Construction Management head Richard Fox was on an early list. Eventually the choice came down to three candidates, the former mayor of New Bedford, the former head of the Registry of Motor Vehicles, and an environmental and finance attorney for the Boston law firm Palmer & Dodge. |
The decision on who to take over the MWRA from Levy was likely influenced by the bruising battle the year before with Judge Mazzone over the EPA requirement for a local backup sludge disposal site. The governor at the time, republican Bill Weld, his environmental affairs secretary, democrat Susan Tierney, and the MWRA Advisory Board all wanted someone who had a clear understanding of the law that was driving the cleanup effort. Fortunately, they had that person in one of the candidates. As a partner at the law firm Palmer & Dodge, Douglas B. MacDonald was the lawyer who had drafted the law creating the MWRA.
MacDonald grew up in Washington State. He graduated from Harvard in 1967, served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi, Africa for two years, then back to Harvard for a law degree in 1973. Moving first to Chicago then Boston he worked as the chief legal counsel for the Massachusetts Port Authority. At Palmer & Dodge he handled environmental issues in the cites of Lynn and New Bedford, and in Puerto Rico. It was a somewhat unusual choice in that MacDonald had no experience running a major state agency. What he did know was what the MWRA had to do to meet the letter of the law, a law he had helped write. |
Almost before MacDonald could settle into his new job another key individual announced they were leaving. Robert Levy had been the driving force getting the project started, Richard Fox was the person who developed the schedule so that the project would meet the letter of the law and be completed on time. Fox would return to CDM first in charge of executive project management, then as president, finally as chairman and CEO of the company. Any concern about the leadership disappeared when another CDM alum, Walter Armstrong, was announced as Fox’s replacement. He had been working on the project all along as deputy director of program controls and engineering.
From inside the MWRA by the spring of 1992 all the different projects needed for the new DITP were underway. It was now just a matter of execution and the company responsible for that, Kaiser Engineers, had a proven record of completing big projects on time and on budget. The Lead Design Engineering firm, Boston-based Metcalf & Eddy had literally written the book on wastewater systems. The MWRA, as a quasi-independent public agency, had far more independence and budgetary control than other state agencies. And there was a federal judge who was doing everything in his power to deflect any external reasons why the project might be displayed. Now it was up to Doug MacDonald to make sure that the project was completed on schedule. |
| A dual narrative is one story told from two different perspectives. The construction of the Boston Harbor Project from one perspective was a costly boondoggle beset with problems and controversies. From another it was world-class construction project completed on time and on budget. It was the former not the later that garnered the most coverage in the early 1990s. One would have thought there would have a real sense of optimism that finally after so many years the harbor was on trajectory to being cleaned up. Some noticed. Scientists monitoring the harbor could reported improvement. |
| For new director MacDonald in 1992 obvious controversies such as where to build the plant were well in the rear-view mirror. The two most impacted communities, Winthrop and Quincy, had gotten their mitigation settlements. Winthrop would run through the money so quickly that even before the new treatment plant was finished town officials with hat in hand were back asking the MWRA for more money. With none coming layoffs and cutbacks in the town would follow. For Quincy it was a different matter. Stopping the sludge and overflows from the Nut Island treatment had greatly reduced the numbers of days beaches in Boston Harbor had to be closed. But not Wollaston Beach in Quincy. It still had a serious pollution problem. It would be difficult to prove but would seem almost likely that the pollution that William Golden found on Wollaston beach in 1982, and the lawsuit that followed, was not from the Nut Island at all rather a CSO problem in Quincy’s own sewage system. It is quite ironic to think that the justification for the entire Boston Harbor cleanup was based on inaccurate information. As a CSO problem Quincy would receive money from the MWRA to end the overflows. |
| Soon in the rear-view mirror for MacDonald would be the controversy over the Walpole sludge site the EPA and Judge Mazzone had forced the MWRA to buy and design. Nothing was ever built and in 2005 Walpole officials asked if they could build playing fields there. Unfortunately, the EPA had not officially given the MWRA permission to give up ownership of the land. |
| One more alternative solution |
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| The principles of constructing and operating a secondary wastewater treatment plant have been known, practiced, and improved on for 100 years. Boston officials, having first delayed building and then later not updating its primary wastewater treatment plants, would let itself be distracted by alternative solutions. The people suggesting alternatives did not want to stall efforts to end pollution in the harbor. In all cases, just the opposite. They were intelligent, well-intentioned people who thought they knew a better way it could be accomplished. Unfortunately, their lobbying efforts for alternative solutions was often latched on to by people with only a political agenda and would result in a delay in the cleanup of the harbor. |
Before the MWRA came into existence there was Charles Parthum’s 1967 Deep Tunnel Plan, in the mid-1970’s Professor John Trump’s high-voltage disinfection scheme, and later in the 1970’s Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s argument that discharging wastewater after secondary treatment would cause excessive growth of algae. Starting in the 1980s it would be the MWRA problem and they would have to respond to another argument against secondary treatment, this just as the agency was finalizing plans for the new plant with that process. It came from the distinguished MIT professor Donald R. F. Harleman. His argument was that a process known as Chemically Enhanced Primary Treatment (CEPT), also known as Advanced Primary, was much less expensive and just as effective in reducing pollution as the secondary-treatment with activated-sludge process the agency was planning on using.
CEPT was not a new process. Since the late 1800s it was known that a chemical agents could be added to wastewater to first bind with and then separate out solids. This was as coagulation and then flocculation. In the late 1960s Dow Chemical had developed a process to reduce the problem of eutrophication, excess growth of algae, resulting from wastewater treatment plants discharging effluent into fresh water. CEPT remained an answer to mid-western freshwater problems until the late-1980s when San Diego demonstrated a ferric chloride and organic polymer-based CEPT solution and then in the following years successfully lobbied a federal judge to avoid building a secondary treatment plant. That waiver came in 1995. In May of 1987 the Boston Globe ran an op-ed from Harleman where he criticized the MWRA for its focus on a building a big secondary treatment plant when CSO was also a major contributor to pollution in the harbor. An argument that had been made before and red meat to critics of money the MWRA was going to spend. |
| There would be no mention of CEPT in the op-ed, that would come in the technical press where unfortunately Harleman overstepped his enthusiasm for the technology and drew the ire of professional wastewater engineers who felt they had been accused of offering only more expensive solutions that would make their companies more money. The use of CEPT technology to eliminate secondary treatment at major wastewater treatment plants did begin to be used in select cities in the 1990s. Some in the United States, more overseas in countries that were improving limited existing wastewater treatment. For the MWRA in the late 1980s there was no question. They were under court order to build a treatment plant that provided secondary treatment. Eventually the MWRA’s would temper its argument saying in the future switching the plant’s treatment process to CVT would be relatively easy if the technology becomes proven and accepted. |
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