August 10, 2024 • 16 mins
Communities along the shores of the Merrimack River, and the health of the people who live in them, are the focus of a new study by a research team at Boston University. The study focuses on "combined sewer overflows", events that are triggered by heavy rains and severe weather that send thousands of gallons of harmful bacteria and sewage into the river. Dr. Beth Haley, a BU URBAN Trainee, joins Nichole this week to talk about the impact of these overflows on residents and what can be done to mitigate this problem.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston. This is New England Weekend.
Each week we come together and talk about all the
topics important to you and the place where you live.
It is great to be back with you again this week.
As always, I'm Nicole Davis. On the hot days we've
had over the past couple of months, the Merrimack River
can get very busy as people get out swimming and tubing, fishing, boating,
(00:28):
anything they can do to try to stay cool. However,
if you knew there was sewage in the river, you
might think twice about taking a dip. Recently, researchers at
Boston University went up to the river to take a
closer look at the impacts of sewage overflows. These events
are brought on by heavy rains and other severe weather.
It can lead to harmful bacteria and all kinds of
pollutants flowing right into the water. You can imagine that
(00:51):
doesn't just impact your summertime swim but also your gastro
intestinal health and the ecosystem of the river itself. Let's
learn a bit more about this study. Doctor Beth Haley,
training at the Boston University Urban Program, is here. Doctor Haley,
thank you so much for your time and your expertise.
Let's start here, because this study focuses on combined sewer overflows.
(01:12):
What are those exactly?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Combined sewer overflows exist in over seven hundred cities in
the US, so they are by no means rare. But
what is particularly interesting about the Merrimack River a few things.
One is that the cities that border the river are smaller.
They're not Boston, they're not Philadelphia, they're not San Francisco,
(01:34):
and so that brings inherent challenges with managing some of
these legacy sewer systems that they have inherited in terms
of the financial resources that are available to deal with
mitigating some of these CSOs, and they haven't received the
same sort of regulatory attention that say Boston has with
(01:54):
the Boston Harbor cleanup. So you've still got these large
CSO events occurring in as, as you said, a very
popular waterway. And the other piece of that that is
concerning from a public health standpoint is that there are
drinking water intakes that are located downstream of CSO.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Outfalls in the Merrimack River.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
There is, and that is an open question still as
to whether or not CSO contamination can impact drinking water
quality and people's health through their drinking water.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
The study found that risk of acute gastro intestinal illness
was the risk of it was elevated in these cities
you mentioned along the Merrimac, the Lawrence, the Lowell, the
Haverill areas when it comes to these stronger storms, and
you know, I was thinking, obviously, we're getting stronger storms
these days because of climate change, and we're getting lots
(02:48):
of flooding and the rainfall is really intense. What are
you seeing developing along the Merrimac as we deal with
this impact of climate change.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Absolutely, that's a great question, and that's part of what
motivated our research and interesting combines to overflows in general.
You're exactly right in New England in the Midwest, which
happened to be the areas where these CSOs are located.
Both of those regions are predicted to get more intense
and frequent rainfall events and we're seeing that some like
(03:16):
you're saying, we're already seeing that. And with that, those
are the conditions that cause these combined seer overflow events.
And as you mentioned, in this study, we saw a
higher risk following the largest volume CSO events, which tells
us that those conditions that climate change are bringing further
(03:40):
to the region may be the exact conditions that are
which we would get these really large events which could
put people's health at risk further.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Yeah, and obviously many of our sewer systems. You kind
of touched on this here in Massachusetts. We're an older state.
History is a big thing here. You're from here. You know,
everything's kind of old. We love our history. But unfortunately
that also kind of ounce for our sewer systems. You know,
some of them are decades old, half a century, a
century old. But it takes a lot of money and
(04:07):
investment and time to replace these systems. Do you think
that this is going to be a priority in the
coming years because of this?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
I would agree with you that the historical.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Historical character of New England does definitely lead to some
sewer systems and other sorts of drinking water infrastructure, drinking
water and waste water infrastructure that need repair, that need maintenance.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
There is more federal money now available for infrastructure than
there has been in years past, but that's going to
a lot of different infrastructure systems. So it will be
interesting to see how that investment occurs in Massachusetts and elsewhere.
What you hit on with history is not a coincidence.
(04:55):
These older systems, these combined sewer systems were built in
older cities.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Many of them were built in times when.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Germ theory wasn't even necessarily fully accepted, so people didn't
totally understand how we got sick from infectious pathogens. And
so that's why you see combined source systems where you
do in New England, in the Midwest, and in some
of the older cities on the West coast, but very
(05:24):
few on the West Coast because largely by the time
that some of the cities were being developed out there,
they had figured out that this wasn't the best plan.
But you do see a lot of combined serer systems
in older cities in Europe.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And across the world as well for the same reason.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
And that almost leads to an environmental justice question if
you ask me, because in a lot of these cities
you have some underrepresented communities, you have lower income families,
So it's kind of a one two punch when you've
got not only these older sewage systems, but you also
have families who may not be able to put special
filters in their homes. They may not be able to
(05:59):
find in two ways to protect themselves individually. So talk
to us about that angle of this.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Absolutely right, In some of the communities that have combined
source systems in the Merrimack Valley are considered environmental justice
communities by the State of massa Chusetts.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
That includes Laurence and includes.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Loll And you're absolutely right. The ability to do things
like point of use drinking water filters and affording that
is definitely a question that has relevance for environmental justice.
Also considering recreation and access to blue spaces and green
(06:38):
spaces that are clean and safe. You know, these are
things that there is more and more evidence linking natural
areas in urban environments to improve human health and well being.
And people need access to these spaces and they need
to be safe. And so that is that certainly an
element of this work that we feel is really important
(07:02):
as well. And then also just from a communications standpoint,
I mean, one of the components of the definition of
environmental justice within the state of Massachusetts is English is
language isolation, it's English language proficiency. And you know, how
are the alerts communicated and how are people becoming aware
(07:26):
of the potential risk that there may be for using
the river a few days after a CSO event. Only
recently was there a law passed in Massachusetts that required
notification of cs excuse me, of CSO events within the
two days after I think actually it's within a couple
hours after there's actually a CSO event.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Prior to that, you needed to know what.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
A CSO was, not that they existed, and then you
also need to know the cities they were in, and
you need to sign up for each city's different notifications.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Oh wow, and.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Some of them don't have them so, or didn't have
them when we first started doing this work.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
So it really took some digging. And that is technically the.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Information was public, but you really already needed to be
in the know and sort of aware of how to
access that resource, which is not from a public health standpoint,
something we would consider particularly effective.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And certainly not something you're thinking about, especially if you're
living in one of these environmental justice communities where your
priority is putting food on the table, your priority is
getting the kids to school. You're not thinking about, Oh goodness,
is the Merrimac River dealing with a combined sewer overload event.
It's just not something that your everyday lay person is
going to necessarily have the brain space or the knowledge
(08:49):
to go and search out right.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yes, absolutely, so okay.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So then what comes next here? You've got all this data.
You're very clear here about the impacts of these overflows
into the river. Where do we go from here? How
do we move forward?
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Great question?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
There are very few studies that have from a let
me answer from a research.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Side first, Yeah, there are very few studies.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
That have actually looked at the association between combined sewers
and human health. We have a systematic review coming out
really soon that actually looked at that question.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Like where, what how many studies are there? What do
they find?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
As an overview of all the scientific literature we can
get our hands on.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
We found eight studies. They are all done at sort
of city level or very small regional level like state
of Massachusetts. Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
And so what that really gives us our little snapshots
of this association in different places at different times. And
what we don't have right now is a more holistic view,
a more generalizable understanding, and maybe to some extent we
won't get that in the way that we want because
each of these systems is different, each of these communities
(10:06):
is different, each of these waterways that are different, and in
the nitty gritty details of doing the research.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
That makes a big difference.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Of course, the other piece is that this study is
the way that it's designed. It tells us that there's
an association, and we were we did our best with
the methods we used to control for differences between the
communities and to try to understand some of the things
that might be influencing this association. But it is not
(10:32):
the kind of study that we can point to and say, look,
this officially, from an epidemiological standpoint causes AGI.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
We can't say CSOs cause AGI from this study. And
there are other.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Study designs you could use that potentially could show that,
And so that's a potential next step down the line
that said, the body of literature that does exist does
tend to show a positive association between CSOs and gastrointestinal illness,
(11:06):
and intuitively we understand that, right this is not one
of the most complicated public health issues out there.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
You put sewage in the water, people might get sick.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
That's you know, we've all been talking about the.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Sin and make the Olympics, like we have the same issues.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
And we are very focused on this one human health outcome,
but there are a lot of environmental impacts that come
from combined sewer overflows as well, because it's not just
human pathogens that are in this water. You've got all
of the components of untreated wastewater and stormwater, so you've
got all of the heavy metals, You've got different sort
(11:47):
of pesticides, different other chemical applications like py fast that
could be in this waste.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
So the holistic view of what these inputs could be
doing to our waterways and human health feels like an
important thing for us to be thinking about in terms
of the value of the investment to really mitigate the
combined sewer systems.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
And you mentioned before how expensive it is to truly
separate these systems. The mitigation the other mitigation strategies are
also very expensive. There's like putting in more storage in
the system, for example, is one option so that you
can avoid some of.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
The CSO events.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
But as we get as we move into a space
of more frequent and larger rainfall events, we also need
to be building and designing those systems to be able
to deal with that kind of capacity, and that's not
always the case in some of these long term control
(12:55):
plans for combined sewer systems.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, and personally individually, if you're listening to this and thinking,
oh my goodness, I live in Lowell, I have a
house very close to the Merrimack River. You know the
most important thing here? Don't panic like that. Yeah, don't panic.
It's not like you've got sewage coming into the house.
But what if people want to take a more individual
(13:18):
path in trying to protect themselves from potentially coming down
with an AGI.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I think the best thing you can do is be
aware of when combined sewer overflow events are occurring, and
also thinking about not when they're happening in your city,
say you live in Lowell, but also when they're occurring upstream.
So being aware of when Manchester and when Nash Winninghampshire
have their CSO events. And at this point, I've been
(13:45):
thinking about rivers for so long. I don't remember a
time when I didn't think about.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
What was upstream. But I know that that's true. I
know that that happens.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And I think a lot of times we don't know
the infrastructure that we rely on, not familiar with it.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
So getting familiar with where your water.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Comes from and what's upstream of you, I think are
very important things. And then getting some of the notifications
for actual CSO events and having that really inform whether
or not you go out on the river. I mean,
I think it's really tough if on a if you
have your weekend open and there's a big rain event
on Friday and then Saturday is just gorgeous, which feels
(14:26):
like it.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Happens, that's what happens. Those are the days you really
want to be thinking. Like I was planning on fishing.
I was taking going to take my kids down to
the river. It's a hot one, it's.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
A hot, beautiful day, but there was a big CSO
event upstream of me last night, and I think you
want to think about that.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Maybe stick to the pool instead, right, Yeah, Well, you
know this is really important research and Beth, you know personally,
you know last question I have for you personally being
a New England native, I mean, what does this mean
to you to be doing this work for our region
and for our community.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
It was an absolute I won't say dream, because I
don't think I ever said I'm going to study human
wastewater and it's impact on health.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
That's fair, but it really did.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
It made me very happy to be able to do
work so close to home and to contribute to an
area that I had spent a lot of time in
growing up.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
I grew up in Reading, so oh very good. Not
in the.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Merrimac Watershed, but just outside of it, sure, and you know,
went north often and was very familiar with that area
growing up. So yeah, So I think that that is
really the dream, to be able to contribute to to
your community in that way.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
I believe it all right. Well, Beth, thank you so
much for your time. Thank you for the research, and
I learned a lot today about sewer overflows. I never
thought i'd say that, but thank you for the education.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
You're so welcome, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Thanks again for tuning in as always via the podcast
or live. It is good to have you, and I
hope you have a safe and healthy weekend. Please join
us again next week for another edition of the show.
I'm Nicole Davis from WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio.
From WBZ News Radio in Boston. This is New England Weekend.
Each week we come together and talk about all the
topics important to you and the place where you live.
It is great to be back with you again this week.
As always, I'm Nicole Davis. On the hot days we've
had over the past couple of months, the Merrimack River
can get very busy as people get out swimming and tubing, fishing, boating,
(00:28):
anything they can do to try to stay cool. However,
if you knew there was sewage in the river, you
might think twice about taking a dip. Recently, researchers at
Boston University went up to the river to take a
closer look at the impacts of sewage overflows. These events
are brought on by heavy rains and other severe weather.
It can lead to harmful bacteria and all kinds of
pollutants flowing right into the water. You can imagine that
(00:51):
doesn't just impact your summertime swim but also your gastro
intestinal health and the ecosystem of the river itself. Let's
learn a bit more about this study. Doctor Beth Haley,
training at the Boston University Urban Program, is here. Doctor Haley,
thank you so much for your time and your expertise.
Let's start here, because this study focuses on combined sewer overflows.
(01:12):
What are those exactly?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Combined sewer overflows exist in over seven hundred cities in
the US, so they are by no means rare. But
what is particularly interesting about the Merrimack River a few things.
One is that the cities that border the river are smaller.
They're not Boston, they're not Philadelphia, they're not San Francisco,
(01:34):
and so that brings inherent challenges with managing some of
these legacy sewer systems that they have inherited in terms
of the financial resources that are available to deal with
mitigating some of these CSOs, and they haven't received the
same sort of regulatory attention that say Boston has with
(01:54):
the Boston Harbor cleanup. So you've still got these large
CSO events occurring in as, as you said, a very
popular waterway. And the other piece of that that is
concerning from a public health standpoint is that there are
drinking water intakes that are located downstream of CSO.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Outfalls in the Merrimack River.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
There is, and that is an open question still as
to whether or not CSO contamination can impact drinking water
quality and people's health through their drinking water.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
The study found that risk of acute gastro intestinal illness
was the risk of it was elevated in these cities
you mentioned along the Merrimac, the Lawrence, the Lowell, the
Haverill areas when it comes to these stronger storms, and
you know, I was thinking, obviously, we're getting stronger storms
these days because of climate change, and we're getting lots
(02:48):
of flooding and the rainfall is really intense. What are
you seeing developing along the Merrimac as we deal with
this impact of climate change.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Absolutely, that's a great question, and that's part of what
motivated our research and interesting combines to overflows in general.
You're exactly right in New England in the Midwest, which
happened to be the areas where these CSOs are located.
Both of those regions are predicted to get more intense
and frequent rainfall events and we're seeing that some like
(03:16):
you're saying, we're already seeing that. And with that, those
are the conditions that cause these combined seer overflow events.
And as you mentioned, in this study, we saw a
higher risk following the largest volume CSO events, which tells
us that those conditions that climate change are bringing further
(03:40):
to the region may be the exact conditions that are
which we would get these really large events which could
put people's health at risk further.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Yeah, and obviously many of our sewer systems. You kind
of touched on this here in Massachusetts. We're an older state.
History is a big thing here. You're from here. You know,
everything's kind of old. We love our history. But unfortunately
that also kind of ounce for our sewer systems. You know,
some of them are decades old, half a century, a
century old. But it takes a lot of money and
(04:07):
investment and time to replace these systems. Do you think
that this is going to be a priority in the
coming years because of this?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
I would agree with you that the historical.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Historical character of New England does definitely lead to some
sewer systems and other sorts of drinking water infrastructure, drinking
water and waste water infrastructure that need repair, that need maintenance.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
There is more federal money now available for infrastructure than
there has been in years past, but that's going to
a lot of different infrastructure systems. So it will be
interesting to see how that investment occurs in Massachusetts and elsewhere.
What you hit on with history is not a coincidence.
(04:55):
These older systems, these combined sewer systems were built in
older cities.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Many of them were built in times when.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Germ theory wasn't even necessarily fully accepted, so people didn't
totally understand how we got sick from infectious pathogens. And
so that's why you see combined source systems where you
do in New England, in the Midwest, and in some
of the older cities on the West coast, but very
(05:24):
few on the West Coast because largely by the time
that some of the cities were being developed out there,
they had figured out that this wasn't the best plan.
But you do see a lot of combined serer systems
in older cities in Europe.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And across the world as well for the same reason.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
And that almost leads to an environmental justice question if
you ask me, because in a lot of these cities
you have some underrepresented communities, you have lower income families,
So it's kind of a one two punch when you've
got not only these older sewage systems, but you also
have families who may not be able to put special
filters in their homes. They may not be able to
(05:59):
find in two ways to protect themselves individually. So talk
to us about that angle of this.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Absolutely right, In some of the communities that have combined
source systems in the Merrimack Valley are considered environmental justice
communities by the State of massa Chusetts.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
That includes Laurence and includes.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Loll And you're absolutely right. The ability to do things
like point of use drinking water filters and affording that
is definitely a question that has relevance for environmental justice.
Also considering recreation and access to blue spaces and green
(06:38):
spaces that are clean and safe. You know, these are
things that there is more and more evidence linking natural
areas in urban environments to improve human health and well being.
And people need access to these spaces and they need
to be safe. And so that is that certainly an
element of this work that we feel is really important
(07:02):
as well. And then also just from a communications standpoint,
I mean, one of the components of the definition of
environmental justice within the state of Massachusetts is English is
language isolation, it's English language proficiency. And you know, how
are the alerts communicated and how are people becoming aware
(07:26):
of the potential risk that there may be for using
the river a few days after a CSO event. Only
recently was there a law passed in Massachusetts that required
notification of cs excuse me, of CSO events within the
two days after I think actually it's within a couple
hours after there's actually a CSO event.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Prior to that, you needed to know what.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
A CSO was, not that they existed, and then you
also need to know the cities they were in, and
you need to sign up for each city's different notifications.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Oh wow, and.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Some of them don't have them so, or didn't have
them when we first started doing this work.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
So it really took some digging. And that is technically the.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Information was public, but you really already needed to be
in the know and sort of aware of how to
access that resource, which is not from a public health standpoint,
something we would consider particularly effective.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And certainly not something you're thinking about, especially if you're
living in one of these environmental justice communities where your
priority is putting food on the table, your priority is
getting the kids to school. You're not thinking about, Oh goodness,
is the Merrimac River dealing with a combined sewer overload event.
It's just not something that your everyday lay person is
going to necessarily have the brain space or the knowledge
(08:49):
to go and search out right.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yes, absolutely, so okay.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So then what comes next here? You've got all this data.
You're very clear here about the impacts of these overflows
into the river. Where do we go from here? How
do we move forward?
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Great question?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
There are very few studies that have from a let
me answer from a research.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Side first, Yeah, there are very few studies.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
That have actually looked at the association between combined sewers
and human health. We have a systematic review coming out
really soon that actually looked at that question.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Like where, what how many studies are there? What do
they find?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
As an overview of all the scientific literature we can
get our hands on.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
We found eight studies. They are all done at sort
of city level or very small regional level like state
of Massachusetts. Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
And so what that really gives us our little snapshots
of this association in different places at different times. And
what we don't have right now is a more holistic view,
a more generalizable understanding, and maybe to some extent we
won't get that in the way that we want because
each of these systems is different, each of these communities
(10:06):
is different, each of these waterways that are different, and in
the nitty gritty details of doing the research.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
That makes a big difference.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Of course, the other piece is that this study is
the way that it's designed. It tells us that there's
an association, and we were we did our best with
the methods we used to control for differences between the
communities and to try to understand some of the things
that might be influencing this association. But it is not
(10:32):
the kind of study that we can point to and say, look,
this officially, from an epidemiological standpoint causes AGI.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
We can't say CSOs cause AGI from this study. And
there are other.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Study designs you could use that potentially could show that,
And so that's a potential next step down the line
that said, the body of literature that does exist does
tend to show a positive association between CSOs and gastrointestinal illness,
(11:06):
and intuitively we understand that, right this is not one
of the most complicated public health issues out there.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
You put sewage in the water, people might get sick.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
That's you know, we've all been talking about the.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Sin and make the Olympics, like we have the same issues.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
And we are very focused on this one human health outcome,
but there are a lot of environmental impacts that come
from combined sewer overflows as well, because it's not just
human pathogens that are in this water. You've got all
of the components of untreated wastewater and stormwater, so you've
got all of the heavy metals, You've got different sort
(11:47):
of pesticides, different other chemical applications like py fast that
could be in this waste.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
So the holistic view of what these inputs could be
doing to our waterways and human health feels like an
important thing for us to be thinking about in terms
of the value of the investment to really mitigate the
combined sewer systems.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
And you mentioned before how expensive it is to truly
separate these systems. The mitigation the other mitigation strategies are
also very expensive. There's like putting in more storage in
the system, for example, is one option so that you
can avoid some of.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
The CSO events.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
But as we get as we move into a space
of more frequent and larger rainfall events, we also need
to be building and designing those systems to be able
to deal with that kind of capacity, and that's not
always the case in some of these long term control
(12:55):
plans for combined sewer systems.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, and personally individually, if you're listening to this and thinking,
oh my goodness, I live in Lowell, I have a
house very close to the Merrimack River. You know the
most important thing here? Don't panic like that. Yeah, don't panic.
It's not like you've got sewage coming into the house.
But what if people want to take a more individual
(13:18):
path in trying to protect themselves from potentially coming down
with an AGI.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I think the best thing you can do is be
aware of when combined sewer overflow events are occurring, and
also thinking about not when they're happening in your city,
say you live in Lowell, but also when they're occurring upstream.
So being aware of when Manchester and when Nash Winninghampshire
have their CSO events. And at this point, I've been
(13:45):
thinking about rivers for so long. I don't remember a
time when I didn't think about.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
What was upstream. But I know that that's true. I
know that that happens.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And I think a lot of times we don't know
the infrastructure that we rely on, not familiar with it.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
So getting familiar with where your water.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Comes from and what's upstream of you, I think are
very important things. And then getting some of the notifications
for actual CSO events and having that really inform whether
or not you go out on the river. I mean,
I think it's really tough if on a if you
have your weekend open and there's a big rain event
on Friday and then Saturday is just gorgeous, which feels
(14:26):
like it.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Happens, that's what happens. Those are the days you really
want to be thinking. Like I was planning on fishing.
I was taking going to take my kids down to
the river. It's a hot one, it's.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
A hot, beautiful day, but there was a big CSO
event upstream of me last night, and I think you
want to think about that.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Maybe stick to the pool instead, right, Yeah, Well, you
know this is really important research and Beth, you know personally,
you know last question I have for you personally being
a New England native, I mean, what does this mean
to you to be doing this work for our region
and for our community.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
It was an absolute I won't say dream, because I
don't think I ever said I'm going to study human
wastewater and it's impact on health.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
That's fair, but it really did.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
It made me very happy to be able to do
work so close to home and to contribute to an
area that I had spent a lot of time in
growing up.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
I grew up in Reading, so oh very good. Not
in the.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Merrimac Watershed, but just outside of it, sure, and you know,
went north often and was very familiar with that area
growing up. So yeah, So I think that that is
really the dream, to be able to contribute to to
your community in that way.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
I believe it all right. Well, Beth, thank you so
much for your time. Thank you for the research, and
I learned a lot today about sewer overflows. I never
thought i'd say that, but thank you for the education.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
You're so welcome, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Thanks again for tuning in as always via the podcast
or live. It is good to have you, and I
hope you have a safe and healthy weekend. Please join
us again next week for another edition of the show.
I'm Nicole Davis from WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio.
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