The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts has entered a Consent Decree settling an enforcement action against the City of Haverhill, Massachusetts for multiple Clean Water Act violations, including sanitary sewer overflows, combined sewer overflows (CSOs), and stormwater violations. Under the Consent Decree, Haverhill will pay a $125,000 penalty, identify and remove source of illicit discharges from its storm drains, require construction site post-development stormwater controls, implement a sanitary sewer collection system management program, develop and implement a combined sewer control plan, and evaluate the wastewater treatment facility and implement optimization projects and capital improvements.
The City will for one year perform continuous electronic monitoring of each of its active CSO outfalls in order to record the date and time when flow from each outfall commences, the date and time when such flows cease, and the total volume released during each activation. After one year, the City will maintain permanent meters on a subset of its outfalls. Also, the City will submit email notification within 24 hours of any CSO discharge to Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, EPA, the Merrimack River Watershed Council, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and Boards of Health agents for downstream communities, advising them of the discharge, and shall continue to issue email notification on successive days unless and until the discha