The Friends of Lynn and Nahant Beach are advocating for better water quality at King’s Beach after a recent study by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) confirmed the presence of COVID-19 in untreated sewage.
The study, which tracks wastewater at the Deer Island Treatment Plant three to seven times a week, shows spikes of COVID traces in sewage correlating with previous surges in COVID cases.
The results were analyzed by Biobot Analytics, a wastewater epidemiology company, and updated as received by Biobot following an internal review process, according to MWRA’s website.
The stormwater pipes that empty onto King’s Beach, which extends from Lynn to Swampscott, have been known to leak high bacteria counts, according to a report from Boston.com that rated the location as one of the state’s dirtiest beaches.
The Friends of Lynn and Nahant Beach sent letters in January to the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), which has jurisdiction over King’s Beach, and the state Department of Public Health (DPH), which regulates its water quality, regarding the concerns of COVID in the water, but has not received a response from either entity.
Robert Tucker, president of The Friends of Lynn and Nahant Beach, stated in the letter that the data collected by DCR showed bacteria levels in the outfall water testing that were 10 to 20 times the level considered to be safe by the DPH.
Now, the organization is concerned that untreated sewage water containing the virus could leak into those pipes.
Tucker requested in the letter that “warning signs be placed at and near the Stacey’s Brook outfall on King’s Beach in Lynn and Swampscott due to the likelihood that raw sewage, and along with it COVID-19, are contained within the outfall’s water.”
Lynn Water & Sewer Commission Executive Director Daniel O’Neill said he has no problem with putting up more signs at the beach, but noted that 99.9 percent of the time, the water coming out of the pipes is just rainwater.
“It’s not wastewater, it’s just urban runoff,” he said. “For 15 minutes in 2020, it (the pipes) had a mixture of very slight sewage after a torrential downpour, but other than that 15 minutes, it’s strictly been stormwater.”
According to O’Neill, all of the sewage waste goes directly to the Lynn Water and Sewer Plant, where about 25 million gallons are treated each day, rather than the beach. He said the LWSC tests and samples the water before the beach season every year.
“If we had a blatant sewage connection into the drain, I want to fix it,” he said. “We would dig it up and get it out.”
O’Neill said if there were a COVID issue in the water at King’s Beach, then it would be a difficult endeavor of finding the source. It would be nearly impossible given the 200 miles of coverage, he said, noting that it would not be due to sewage.
He emphasized that if there is waste or trash that is dropped into catch basins around the city, then that would end up coming out of the pipes at King’s Beach. But he said he cannot police what people throw into them.
One of the pipes that flows into King’s Beach is strictly from Swampscott, which the Friends of Lynn and Nahant Beach believe is partly sewage since the town was ordered to fix their sewage system a few years ago through a federal consent decree.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency filed a complaint against the town of Swampscott in 2015 stating that pollutants were being discharged into navigable waters of the United States from a municipal separate storm sewer system, violating a section of the Clean Water Act.
Gino Cresta, Swampscott’s public works director, could not be reached for comment for this story, but has described that problem in the past as sewage discharging into the ocean at King’s Beach at the Lynn-Swampscott line. Sewage is getting into the drainage pipe, and then gets into the ocean.
In order to get into compliance with the consent decree, the town of Swampscott is attempting to remedy that issue through a $10.7 million, eight-year project aimed at cleaning up sewage discharging onto the beach from the Stacey Brook system.
Lynn has also been hit with a federal consent decree for violating the Massachusetts Clean Water Act, and has already spent millions to clean up King’s Beach and stop sewage from discharging into the ocean. O’Neill said although he is not sure of Swampscott’s system, he believes that it is similar to that of the LWSC.
Tucker said the issue has not been made a priority and the organization urges the state to test the water to be safe, assuming that the COVID traces from the MWRA study applies to the drainage water at King’s Beach as well.
“We do a lot of advocating with DCR to keep the beaches looking good,” he said. “But this one is a little bit beyond what we can do.”
As the only free public beach in Lynn, Tucker said he and the organization want to ensure the safety of all of the people that utilize King’s Beach, especially now that the warm weather is returning. It is an urgent matter that needs to be recognized, he said.
Allysha Dunnigan can be reached at [email protected]