Guest Author: Nathan Sanders
In an equitable state, your exposure to dangerous pollutants would have nothing to do with your zip code. But because of structural inequities in land use and pollution, sewage spills impact low income, minority, and linguistically isolated communities in Massachusetts at substantially higher rates than wealthier, whiter, and largely English-speaking ones.
As a result, sewage spills are not only a public health risk and not only an environmental hazard, but also an Environmental Justice tragedy.
As a case study, consider the Merrimack River watershed, which ranks near the top statewide in all three of these population characteristics. Despite receiving about 800 million gallons of sewage per year, the Merrimack remains the second largest source of drinking water in Massachusetts, serving towns such as Lowell, Lawrence, and Methuen.
Consider also our own Mystic River watershed, home to half a million and even higher concentrations of non-white residents in towns such as Boston, Everett, and Chelsea. While the Mystic has a vibrant recreational scene, it also receives more than 150 million gallons of sewage annually.
In general, communities in Massachusetts that have twice the concentration of non-white residents tend to have 200% more sewage spilled within their borders than their whiter counterparts.
The numbers by income are worse: communities that have twice the rate of poverty tend to have 220% more sewage spilled than their wealthier counterparts. Communities with fewer adult English speakers are also systematically overburdened.
What is the effect of all this sewage? Unsurprisingly, both drinking and swimming in sewage-contaminated waters results in increased rates of gastrointestinal illness. Massachusetts residents are not routinely informed when the rivers and waterways they drink from at their tap; walk along with their families; and boat, row, and swim in are inundated with sewage. We are therefore deprived of the basic information we need to manage this health risk.
These statistics are based on a geospatial analysis of data from 2011. It may be that the inequity of sewage discharges has improved over the past decade. There has certainly been significant progress made via court-ordered infrastructure improvements during that time by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, the City of Cambridge, and others. Yet in the absence of a standardized reporting requirement, researchers cannot access more recent data to assess progress on equity measures.
Given the focus on inequality emerging in our public discourse, perhaps it won't shock you to learn that, in sewage contamination as in so much else, you’re much better off if you're white and wealthy. But every Bay Stater should care—indeed, the Commonwealth is constitutionally obligated—to ensure that the risks associated with pollution are not directed towards our most vulnerable.
Environmental Justice, the concept that communities should not be overburdened by pollution on the basis of characteristics like income and color, is recognized as a critical protection by Massachusetts as well as the US Environmental Protection Agency. Its enshrinement in the laws and rules of our government is a key legacy of the US Civil Rights Movement.
Whether or not the guarantee of Environmental Justice is realized in the Commonwealth today depends on all of us and the action of our representatives. The recent passage of the sewage notification act, for which MyRWA advocated tirelessly for 8 years and has covered extensively in its blog in recent weeks, represents substantial action towards this goal.
This new law is merely a first step. The problem of sewage spills in public waterways will require significant new capital investments to eliminate. To build public support for this investment, we must achieve widespread public awareness of the existence of this problem and its ill effects. Moreover, we must achieve public appreciation of the inequity baked into our infrastructure, and we must mobilize a widespread demand for change.
About the author: Nathan Sanders is a volunteer member of the MyRWA Policy Committee, an organizer in science communication, and a professional data scientist.
