Swampscott's King's Beach Cleanup Faces Daunting Challenges
SWAMPSCOTT, MA — A comprehensive report on the progress made — and the long, long way to go — in fixing the century-old Swampscott water, sewer and drainage system painted a daunting picture for those hoping for a quick fix to the aging infrastructure and water quality issues at King's Beach at Wednesday's Select Board meeting.
The report outlined the roughly $6.5 million that the town spent on source elimination for the outflows in the King's Beach area of town from 2017 to 2022, which led to the relining of about 44 percent of the pipes that lead to Stacey's Brook and the polluted King's Beach shoreline. Yet, while representatives from the town's engineering firm, Kleinfelder, said that work led to cleaner water running through those pipes, it had a negligible effect on the water quality of King's Beach overall with the remaining pipes in just that area of town not scheduled to be completed for about eight more years.
The assessment came as momentum has gathered toward cleaning up King's Beach for recreational use — and the health of those who continue to use it — despite water quality warnings in recent months, while the immense scope of the problem has provided a sobering reality in terms of the time and money that will be required to fix it after decades of neglect.
"It's a lot more complicated than a lot of people want to wrap their minds around," said Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald, who has advocated for state and federal funding of cleanup efforts. "We just don't have the ability right now to go out there and fund this all. What we can do is go out there and get on a really regimented plan where every couple of years we're making these investments, not just in the King's Beach area but in the whole town."
King's Beach advocates have pushed for more urgency in doing all the town can to reduce its source elimination problem as part of the solution. But experts have noted that when it comes to King's Beach even Swampscott virtually eliminating all pollutants from its drainage would only go so far with it being a shared shoreline and outfall with Lynn.
"I am not convinced that anything we have been doing will give us any certitude over the next 10 years (about the safety of King's Beach)," Fitzgerald said. "It will continue to frustrate us that we're shoveling against a tide we can't get in sync with."
Over the past year, there have been presentations about a potential UV light treatment of the outfall that could "clean" the water of bacteria caused by fecal matter, while Swampscott and Lynn officials have pursued regulatory and permitting relief of an extended outfall pipe extending into the ocean.
Fitzgerald told the Select Board on Wednesday that the town received indications from the state that months could potentially be shaved off a permitting process forecast to take years for the outfall.
He argued that the town has made incremental overall progress on the infrastructure issues and that it is ahead of where many other cities and towns are in that the recent report is at least beginning to examine the issues and create a pathway for a long-term approach to fixes and maintenance that never before existed in Swampscott.
"Just keep it working has generally been our game plan," he allowed. "We know that we have pipes that need to work. We know that we have a drainage system that needs to work. We know that we have a sewer system that needs to work. When they break, we fix them. The thing that keeps me up at night is: 'What's going to happen that we don't know about yet?'"
He said the assessment helps answer some of those questions.
But while some advocates pushed additional capital spending — as well as investments through potential taxes and surcharges — to accelerate the work, there was some pushback in terms of expectations.
"If we jacked up the rates as high as possible we possibly could conceive we'd fix it all tomorrow," Fitzgerald said. "We'd rip up the whole town and we'd go through an incredibly significant imposition, sleeve all the pipes and still wonder what's going to happen to King's Beach because we're not the only ones who are going to be solving that problem because this is a regional issue."
(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.)