Trapilo Asks for Action on NB Sewage Discharge
Fairhaven Planning Board member Rick Trapilo planned to present these remarks to the Select Board on 6/24/24
Good evening, Madam Chair and members of our Select Board,
I am speaking to you tonight as an elected member of our Planning Board and a proud citizen of our beloved town.
When I placed my name before the voters of Fairhaven to be elected to the Planning Board, I promised to focus on three fundamental priorities for our coastal communities: health, safety, and prosperity, both today and in the years ahead.
The issue I bring to your attention this evening requires your proactive leadership. We need to collaborate with our neighboring city of New Bedford and all the communities along the South Coast to stop the ultimate destruction of Buzzards Bay. The continued discharge of raw waste and chemicals into our bay by an antiquated sewage system is a fundamental threat to the health, safety, and prosperity of every coastal community’s citizen.
This past weekend for the first time in 31 years the Buzzards Bay swim was canceled due to pollution from the antiquated sewage system of New Bedford. Per Mr. Rasmussen CEO Buzzards Bay this event is “cancelled because of circumstances beyond our control.”
That statement is so very wrong. Every elected official has known about this problem for decades and no leadership has taken charge to get Federal funding to design and fund for the City of New Bedford; drainpipes for storm and waste to be separate, a holding tank for waste in emergency, and a new Plant if needed to handle their growing population.
The City of New Bedford has a 20-year plan to mitigate this outflow, according to Mr. Ponte of the City of New Bedford, this plan “should ultimately limit the combined sewage flow to occur only in 100-year storms. Yet, this plan will not fully resolve the issue of combined sewer overflows”.
In 2023 alone, almost 600 million gallons of discharge were released. Multiply that by 20 years, and the exponential impact on our health, from air quality to our ability to swim, eat our shellfish, and enjoy our beautiful shores, is staggering.
This is not the fault of any one person, but it is the responsibility of every elected official, from our governor and senators to our congressmen, to demand the federal funding needed to develop a short-term, complete solution to end this destruction of our coastal community’s natural resources. In 2017, the City of New Bedford decided against proposing a remediation plan that, in 2022 dollars, would have been worth $1.6 billion.
The scope and financial needs of this issue require federal guidance and funding. I ask this Board to take a leadership position in demanding from our federal government the necessary funding to stop the destruction of our bay.
Please lead, send a unified letter to our Governor, Senators, Congressman, our President demanding a federally funded solution. I will come back to this Board in a few weeks for an update
Thank you , Rick Trapilo
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