About 8 million gallons of untreated wastewater continue to flood daily into the Merrimack River after a sewer line ruptured in Haverhill five days ago.
Several North Shore beaches remained closed for swimming on Tuesday for safety reasons, and Haverhill officials said it could take until Wednesday night to stop the flow of untreated sewage.
A few hundred feet from where the grayish wastewater is flowing into the river, the smell of sewage lingers in the air. It’s faint, though it gets stronger when the wind picks up. The water has already passed through a nearby pump house, so toilet paper and other “floatables” have been filtered out.
Bob Ward, Haverhill’s water and wastewater director, pointed to where the broken pipe created a sink hole. He said it’s still unclear what caused the 42-inch wide pipe to break in two places during a heavy rainstorm on Friday evening.
“We know that there was a lot of flow coming through, but we don’t know if there was some kind of pressure surge for some reason, if there was a blip in the power that caused a pump to shut off,” he said.
Ward said he’s been in close communication with the state Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and that everyone’s first priority is stopping the flow of wastewater.
The plan is to set up a pair of 24-inch plastic lines to bypass the broken pipe, which carries wastewater from the nearby pumping station to the city’s wastewater treatment plant. And contractors with the company Xylem have been hard at work since 1:30 a.m. Saturday, Ward said.
Two black plastic replacement pipes, seen across the water, will be installed to bypass a broken 42-inch wide wastewater pipe in Haverhill. (Miriam Wasser/WBUR)
The first of the two pipes is expected to be in place by Wednesday night, which should stop the flow of sewage into the river. The second pipe, which would help accommodate any extra water from a rainstorm, is expected to be done later this week.
Once the bypass system is in place, crews will use cameras and ground-penetrating radar to pinpoint what caused the break. That will also help determine whether there’s a bigger problem with the city’s sewer system, which Ward called one of the oldest in the country.
The outflow has closed swimming at more than a dozen beaches in Ipswich, Newburyport, Salisbury and Essex. The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries also issued an emergency closure for shellfishing in the area.
Despite the beach closures, city leaders said the massive break hasn’t caused too much disruption for residents. Both the sewer service and drinking water system remain functioning.
“We are able to use our toilets, flush toilets, take showers,” said Haverhill mayor Melinda Barrett. “It doesn’t affect our drinking water at all.”
Several nearby municipalities draw drinking water from the Merrimack River, but all are upstream of the line break, Barrett said.
Gov. Maura Healey said on Tuesday that several state agencies are assisting with the monitoring and emergency response, and that everyone was working hard to fix the problem ahead of the holiday weekend.
“It is a major disruption, we know, for people, for families, for businesses, for people who’ve rented properties to come and enjoy our coastline, and for communities along the Merrimack River,” she said. “And that’s why we’re going to do everything that we can.”
Healey also promised a full investigation into why the pipe failed, and noted that “the incident is also a reminder that aging water infrastructure is under increasing stress from more frequent extreme weather.”
