Swampscott Call For State, Federal Funds For King's Beach Cleanup
SWAMPSCOTT, MA — Swampscott Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald made a public plea for state and federal funding to help the town and neighboring Lynn move forward on a project to clean up King's Beach — routinely rated as one of the most bacteria-filled and unusable beaches in the state.
Eight months after presenting a proposal to the Select Board on a process successfully used in other New England coastal communities that dilutes the bacteria in stormwater with an intense blast of ultraviolet light, Fitzgerald said Wednesday night that he, Lynn Mayor Jared Nicholson and other members of a regional task force presented a 120-page design and feasibility report on the longstanding problem, the potential solution and the need for funding to new Secretary of Executive Office of Energy & Environmental Affairs Rebecca Tepper in a meeting last week.
Now he is hoping the state will respond with a proposal to help the town and city with the approximately $20 to $25 million needed to implement the UV program that the task force determined could be capable of treating up to five million gallons of water per day and make the beach that is deemed unsafe up to 32 percent of the time into one that is swimmable for all but possibly a few days each year.
"We just need a partner in the executive branch of our state government," Fitzgerald said.
He said he is grateful for the federal assistance from U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton and his office, and both past and present members of the North Shore state delegation, but that now is the time for concrete action on the project he told the Select Board in October could be implemented in as soon as 36 months once it actually begins.
"We have many, many obligations just like any city or town," Fitzgerald said. "We are addressing mental health issues. We are addressing educational issues. We are addressing quality-of-life issues, open space issues.
"And we need our federal partners and our state partners to protect the waters of the United States and to help us fund this project that we've identified through some of the best scientific information that we could pay for."
Fitzgerald told the Select Board he hopes to have a sense of "where the state is really going to partner with us in terms of the financial footings" by late July or early August.
"We have to move from a feasibility to a preliminary design for a treatment plant," he said.
The Select Board said it would schedule a public forum with the consulting firm Kleinfelder and citizen comments allowed on the state of the King's Beach cleanup in July.
"It's not just about Swampscott," Fitzgerald said. "It's about environmental justice. Swampscott is an environmental justice community. We have individuals who need to use that resource during hot and humid and difficult weather days."
(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)