LYNN — The Kings Beach Steering Committee is currently in discussion to execute daily testing at Kings Beach this summer in collaboration with the Lynn Water and Sewer Commission.
The members of the committee consist of representatives from Lynn and Swampscott, as well as the nonprofit organization Save the Harbor/Save the Bay.
“They’re gearing up with the potential for Monday-Friday monitoring of both system outfalls at the beach as well as doing some flow metering with a goal of trying to use that as a basis to support future design treatment,” Eric Kelley, principal of Apex Companies, explained to members of the LWSC.
Kelley also noted that the testing was also just to assess the ‘general system health’ in order to compare it to a similar study that Save the Harbor/Save the Bay did in 2017- 2018. But also to obtain data from outfalls that are not solely relying on DCR’s beach samples that are not directly at the pipes.
“They (DCR) may be passing at the beach sample, but what’s coming out of the pipe, which could tell you there’s still something coming,” Kelley stated. “Is it coming under dry conditions? Is it wet weather flows?”
“We do sit in on those discussions but right now it’s mostly going to be handled by others,” Kelley said.
In terms of a timeframe, Kelley explained that it would be a day-to-day collection in the morning, followed by taking the samples to the lab in Swampscott, which opened last year. They will be looking at bacteria counts and Bacteroides.
“That will get them the water quality, and then the flow metering will help (them) figure out actually what is the pollutant load coming from each system, both the towns and cities,” Kelley added. “There will be some coordination if that comes to fruition this summer just with the commission in terms of structure access.”
Kelley shared that the feedback they received after the pilot program last year was that they had snapshots of the water quality, but ultimately, that created the question of “What did that really mean?”
“What is it saying on a daily basis instead of the indiscriminate,” Kelley stated, “…because the DCR sampling is every day but not explicitly from the outfalls.”
He pointed out that last summer was a hydrologic year because of how dry it was.
“We could have a wet summer and (it could) totally change the data,” He stated.
“It could give you some general considerations for…how does it compare to eight years ago and…the work that’s been done and (it) will probably tell us that more work needs to be done,” Kelley stated. “ More than likely, it’s just going to affirm we have to keep on IDDE (Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination).”
Kelley emphasized that this work would be a separate entity from the work that the LWSC is doing in terms of screening and that the work is essentially just a grab sample so it would be difficult to make real assessments over improvements just based on one data point.
