Press Releases

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (MA-03) testified before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, requesting $100 million in federal funding to help address combined sewage overflows (CSOs) in Lowell, Lawrence, Methuen, Haverhill, and Fitchburg.

CLICK HERE or the image below to watch Trahan’s full testimony. CLICK HERE to access a transcript of her testimony as delivered.

Trahan’s testimony comes as Congress is planning to reauthorize the Water Resources Development Act, which provides critical funding to undertake water development projects in communities across the nation. She focused her five minutes before the Committee on combined sewage overflows, which due to heavy rain and snowfalls overwhelming sewage systems, dump hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage and wastewater Merrimack and Nashua Rivers each year.

“In my district, combined sewage overflows, or CSOs, are an all too familiar issue. In fact, many of my colleagues have come to know me as the sewage lady because of how much I talk about the need to stop sewage overflows,” Congresswoman Trahan testified. “So, I don’t think it was a surprise for anyone when I used the five environmental infrastructure requests that each Member was allotted to request authorizations of $20 million each to fix the CSOs in Lowell, Lawrence, Haverhill, Methuen, and Fitchburg.”

The issue in gateway cities is well-documented, and communities have made strong investments in limiting CSOs. In Lowell, the City has invested more than $150 million in combined sewage overflow control projects that have resulted in a 60% reduction in the annual volume of discharges from Lowell’s combined sewer system. Yet, even with these upgrades, the sewage system has been forced to discharge an average of 300 to 450 million gallons of overflow in recent years. Citing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Trahan made clear this issue doesn’t get resolved without federal assistance.

“Lowell, Lawrence, Haverhill, Methuen, and Fitchburg have each taken a number of steps to drive down the amount of sewage that must be discharged each year – and I commend their leadership on that. But each of us knows that this doesn’t get fixed without a serious course correction at the federal level,” Congresswoman Trahan continued. “Now, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is an excellent start. Already, the EPA has provided $188 million this year alone for water infrastructure projects, including CSOs, in Massachusetts. Still, fixing CSOs is not cheap.”

Trahan has advocated repeatedly for this kind of historic federal investment since she first took office in 2019, when the federal allocation for the EPA’s Sewer Overflow and Stormwater Reuse Municipal Grant Program sat at $0. Most recently, she supported passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which allocated $55 billion to upgrade community water systems and replace lead service lines across the nation. Of that funding, Massachusetts is starting to receive its portion of at least $1.1 billion headed to the state over the next half-decade to improve community water infrastructure.

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