New Bedford CSO Program to be Flush with Funds

New Bedford, Mass.’s Combined Sewer Overflow project is slated to get a jolt of cash from the federal government.

Massachusetts Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry, along with Reps. Barney Frank and James P. McGovern, D-Mass., announced Friday that $500,000 in federal funding has been included in the 2006 appropriations bill for the Environmental Protection Agency. The legislation has already been passed by the House and Senate.

According to a report in the Herald News, the law-making quartet also announced that New Bedford would receive $577,000 to assist with a series of CSO upgrades.

Terrance Sullivan, director of the Department of Public Works, said the money is much appreciated.

"It’s wonderful," Sullivan said. "Every penny counts." Frank said he was pleased to assist in getting the funds and would fight to get municipalities more.

The city is under a federal court order to limit the amount of pollution Fall River spills into Mount Hope Bay. The order was issued by Federal Court Judge Rya Zobel in 1992 in response to a lawsuit filed against the city by the Conservation Law Foundation in 1988. Since work began in 2002, the city, through a number of contractors, has constructed a 3-mile tunnel through the city along with a series of drop shafts that connect the existing sewer system to the tunnel.

Sullivan said the tunnel is online and 99% complete while two of the four drop shafts are online. He said work on all of the drop shafts is scheduled for completion this month. In all, the project is expected to cost the city $115 million, $55.9 of which was used for the construction of the tunnel.

Kennedy said that appropriating funds for the CSO project will help take some of the financial pressure off the city, but admits the government, especially in Washington, D.C., could do more.

Source: Herald News