During heavy rain, Providence’s sewers used to get overwhelmed and dump untreated sewage into the Bay. But thanks to a project to increase the capacity of sewers, untreated sewage rarely makes it into our waterways anymore.
Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
If you’ve lived in Rhode Island for a while, you may have noticed that the Narragansett Bay is a whole lot cleaner than it was in the past. We’re here with Possibly reporters Will Malloy and Juliana Merullo to find out why.
Will Malloy: Hi Megan!
Juliana Merullo: Hiya!
Megan Hall: So, is the bay really that much cleaner?
Will Malloy: Legend has it – that back in the day, if you fell into the upper parts of the Narragansett Bay you’d get sent to the hospital for antibiotics. It’s definitely not that bad anymore.
Juliana Merullo: In fact, in recent years, the Bay has gotten so much cleaner that the state has reopened shellfishing grounds that were closed for over 70 years!
Will Malloy: And water quality overall has improved so much that in 2021, parts of the Narragansett Bay were officially taken off the EPA’s list of waterbodies that are so dirty that they don’t comply with the Clean Water Act.
Megan Hall: Wow! That’s great! But how did that happen?
Will Malloy: To find out, we took a trip to the Field’s Point Wastewater Treatment Facility.
Megan Hall: What’s that?
Juliana Merullo: It is the main facility that cleans the water from our sewers before it gets let back into the Bay. It’s under those big windmills we can see from around Providence as we look down the Bay.
Megan Hall: Ok, but why are you going there to figure out why the Bay is cleaner?
Will Malloy: That’s a great question – Jim McCaughey, the Deputy Director of the Narragansett Bay Commission, which operates the Field’s Point facility, says it all goes back to our sewer systems:
Jim McCaughey: Older cities when they built their sewer systems, they were designed to collect both wastewater from homes and businesses, but also stormwater. So the systems are designed to collect both.
Juliana Merullo: The sewers in Providence are that older kind, which means they have to handle both the stuff we flush down the toilet or the drain and our rainwater – all mixed up in the same pipes!
Will Malloy: That makes the system more likely to get overwhelmed if it rains a lot.
Juliana Merullo: And if the system gets overwhelmed the extra water will get stuck in the pipes and back up into people’s homes if it’s not released somehow.
Will Malloy: So the system is designed with release valves that let all that extra water flow out into our waterways, untreated.
Jim McCaughey: So you’d be getting raw wastewater being discharged during a storm into the rivers and the bay. No good.
Megan Hall: Gross!
Will Malloy: Super gross. All that untreated sewage in our waterways made the Bay really unhealthy for people and animals.
Juliana Merullo: Which is why, the Clean Water Act required states across the country to phase out those release valves – which are called “combined sewer overflows” or “CSOs”.
Will Malloy: Because of the Clean Water Act, the EPA said that Providence, and the Field’s Point Facility in particular, had to do something to stop those overflows from overflowing.
Juliana Merullo: So the Narragansett Bay Commission designed a decades-long project to fix the problem.
Will Malloy: Which included building a huge tunnel under the city of Providence!
Jim McCaughey: During rain events there was CSOs that would have gone into the rivers and the bay are discharged into this tunnel, where we can pump out and treat that wastewater.
Juliana Merullo: And that big tunnel holds onto the water until the system is less stressed and can deal with the excess water from the storm.
Megan Hall: That works?
Will Malloy: Yes! Those improvements we talked about earlier – the reopened fishing grounds, the better water quality – are largely thanks to fixing the overflow problem.
Jim McCaughey: When we solved these CSO problems, we’re really servicing the whole state, because this helps anybody that uses the bay, and the rivers.
Megan Hall: That’s great!
Will Malloy: It is – but it’s also worth noting that there are more ways to tackle these kinds of problems, like building infrastructure that prevents water from going into the sewer system in the first place. But that’s for another episode…
Megan Hall: Something to look forward to!
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Possibly is a co-production of The Public’s Radio, Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society and Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative.
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