SWAMPSCOTT — The town held a joint meeting with the City of Lynn on Tuesday regarding the mission between the two entities to reduce pollution and bacteria at King’s Beach.
Community members and public officials gathered in the Memorial Auditorium at Lynn City Hall to discuss the ongoing project.
Aside from Lynn Mayor Jared C. Nicholson and Swampscott’s Interim Town Administrator and Director of the Department of Public Works (DPW) Gino Cresta, other speakers included representatives of the Lynn Water & Sewer Commission, engineering consultants, the state and federal delegation, Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and Save the Harbor/Save the Bay.
The discussion covered several different elements that go into the project, such as source elimination and the Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination (IDDE) program, the ultraviolet (UV) pilot program, as well as summer-time testing and communication.
The elevated bacteria levels at King’s Beach are the result of drainage flowing into the beach from the two outfalls located at the Lynn-Swampscott line near Eastern Avenue, Lynn Shore Drive, and Humphrey Street.
Residents were given time during the event to ask questions about the project’s current state.
Eric Kelley, principal of Apex Companies LLC, commented on progress so far. “We began working with the Lynn Water and Sewer Commission three years ago, and we started with the initial screening of water in Lynn,” Kelley said.
He noted that there was a total of 18 miles of pipes and that 160 samples were collected during stormwater to isolate locations with contamination. A contractor was hired and inspected 16 of the 18 miles of piping. Kelley said they are still in the process of screening and cleaning pipes to find other sources of contamination.
“IDDE continues into the future,” Kelley explained. “It’s a living program that keeps screening until the end of its lifecycle.” He mentioned there were multiple detection methods, such as using cameras, dye testing, and smoke testing.
“All those are tools available and continually deployed,” Kelley said. He added the focus is on cleaning the remaining 1/2 a mile of the pipes.
“I want to remind people that this is an issue for both Swampscott and Lynn; both communities are contributing to the contamination, but there are different issues with each community,” Nicholson explained.
Nicholson noted the Lynn Water and Sewer Commission is working closely with Apex and sending regular updates and feedback to continue communication about the issue.
Cresta added to the conversation saying, “With the help of the Select Board, we formed the Water and Sewer Advisory Commission, and it’s been instrumental, this is both of our problems,”
Cresta noted that over the past several years, several elements of phase one of the project have been completed, with the goal being to continue into phase two.
Dave Peterson Kleinfelder spoke on the project. “The town of Swampscott has been aggressive and responsive to move the program along, and the speed of the program has picked up a lot,” Peterson said. He added that Swampscott’s pipes in question go back as far as 1890, with the overall condition of the pipes contributing to the problem.
“We asked for a high-level overview because we want to cover a lot of ground and get to questions, and we all understand the source elimination is the number one priority, but we’re also looking at other alternatives,” Nicholson explained.
He continued, “IDDE is cyclical, is ongoing always…As soon as we find an issue, we correct it, and it’s happened with the six connections over the last year. When we talk about what’s flowing through the pipes, there are a lot of people and animals here. It can be fertilizer, dog waste, or whatever could enter the system, and that could be a problem.”
Kelley mentioned some of the alternatives considered, such as looking at the outfall extension or physically relocating the outfalls (which was later found to be technically infeasible). Kelley mentioned that the UV pilot treatment had a leg-up over the other options but that other options were still worth exploring.
Executive Director of Save the Harbor Chris Mancini also spoke regarding ways to combat the problem. “The thing about ozone nanobubbles is that it’s an emerging technology that seems very exciting.”
“We’re open to new ideas,” Nicholson said. “There’s no one involved thinking there’s a monopoly on good ideas. We’re exploring other ideas and have made progress in exploring UV light bacterial removal, and as people heard, we’re hoping to run the UV pilot this summer. This was recommended in Kleinfelder’s study.”
Nicholson noted the results of the testing so far were all positive, with the plan being to get the generators up and running by Memorial Day, where the pilot would run throughout the summer.
“The goal of the pilot is to answer questions, but there’s a lot of work to do still,” Nicholson added.
Mancini also mentioned that the way the testing works, it would take about a day to get results of the bacteria levels in the water, which could add to the complications.
“We’re doing daily testing in Swampscott, primarily testing on Fisherman’s Beach,” Cresta said. He added that the goal will be to test E. coli in King’s Beach on a regular basis.
Afterward, the floor was open to attendees to ask questions.
One resident asked if there would be a decimal count for the generators that would be running on Humphrey Street in order to mitigate potential noise problems for nearby residents.
Nicholson responded by saying the decimal would be within the noise guidelines to ensure all measures were taken to reduce the possible impact of noise on the community.
Another attendee asked about the potential impact on wildlife regarding the project as a whole.
“The cleaner water is good for everything,” Mancini said. “The cleanup is good for all wildlife, but right now I consider this as more of a human health threat…It’s not so dramatic that it’s a dead zone, but having less human waste and bacteria in the water is going to help improve the wildlife.”
Save the Harbor Co-Founder Andrea Amour said she agreed with Mayor Nicholson that fixing the pipes alone would not be sufficient.
“What we have been wondering as a group is what the inputs are, and where are they coming from? We know that urban runoff is a real issue going into this…What can we do to start to understand the ecosystem as a whole, not just the piece of this with the pipes?”
Amour continued, “How can we take the lessons we’ve learned as a town and apply them to this much more difficult situation?”
Nicholson responded by saying that data will be regularly collected on different elements that contribute to pollution and that the data will be posted to the public.
