New Bedford, Massachusetts
New Bedford's wastewater treatment facility at Fort Rodman.
Photo courtesy of Shoreline Aerial Photography LLC, provided by CDM Smith.
Located on Buzzards Bay in southeastern Massachusetts, New Bedford is a city
with a rich maritime history and a population of nearly 100,000. New Bedford owns
and operates combined and separate sanitary sewers that transport wastewater to
the city's wastewater treatment facility1, which discharges into Buzzards Bay. The
city's storm sewers2 and combined sewer overflow (CSO) outfalls discharge into the
Acushnet River estuary, Clarks Cove, and New Bedford Harbor. Buzzards Bay supports
tourism, marinas, and recreational fishing.
Challenges
In 1987, New Bedford agreed to reduce CSOs and build a new secondary wastewater
treatment facility under a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.
The consent decree was updated in 1990 and 1995 to address cited affordability
constraints and allow the city to prioritize wastewater treatment facility improvements
and delay CSO abatement activities.
By 2012, New Bedford had reduced CSO volumes by 91 percent since 1990, but it still
discharged 284 million gallons of sewage into waterways that year. That same year,
EPA issued an administrative order that required the city to address sanitary sewer
overflows (SSOs) and develop a scope for updating its long-term control plan (LTCP)
for managing CSOs. In addition to these requirements, New Bedford anticipated new
nitrogen effluent limits that could require costly upgrades to its wastewater treatment
facility. The city also has a stormwater discharge permit that includes a total maximum
daily load (TMDL) for pathogens in Buzzards Bay.
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Integrated Planning in Action
By 2016, New Bedford met all the deadlines in EPA's 2012 administrative order and
submitted a scope of work to integrate the LTCP with a capital improvement plan in
lieu of the more traditional LTCP that the order required. The city asked to use the
proposed integrated planning approach to prioritize projects that would address
overarching issues.
New Bedford staff held meetings with various stakeholders, city departments, and the
public and identified more than 150 concerns and impacts. For example, bacteria reduction and system failure prevention
were the city's priorities in addition to CSO abatement. The city then distilled this input into six core issues to address
through integrated planning (see box at right) and established goals for each. For example, the city set the following six
project goals for addressing water quality impairments: 1) address management goals in the TMDL; 2) reduce nitrogen and
Core Issues Addressed Through
the Integrated Planning Process
~	Water quality impairments
¦	Public health and safety
¦	Existing infrastructure reliability
¦	Climate change
~	Sustainability
¦	Need for economic
development
"Wastewater treatment facilities" (WWTFs) is a generic term for facilities that treat or manage wastewater, including publicly owned
treatment works.
Storm sewers and storm sewer systems can also be referred to as municipal separate storm sewer systems (MS4s). Stormwater
discharge permits can be referred to as MS4 permits.

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phosphorus to increase dissolved oxygen concentrations; 3)
control/reduce discharges of oil, grease, and trash; 4) ensure
the wastewater treatment facility is operated to reduce
nitrogen discharges; 5) prioritize control of CSOs in sensitive
areas; and 6) meet the requirements of the city's stormwater
permit.
New Bedford identified locations within the city where
systems were not performing optimally or needed
improvement to meet plan goals through a series of internal
workshops, public meetings, document reviews, modeling,
system assessments, and site investigations. The city
proposed projects to address all identified problems in these
specific locations; however, the full suite of projects would
have cost $1.2 billion, which the city deemed unaffordable.
Therefore, the planning team focused on how best to
prioritize and select projects to include in the integrated
plan.
New Bedford first divided the full suite of projects into
eight categories (see box below). It then prioritized the
projects within each category, considering how critical the
associated infrastructure was, the water quality benefits,
how well each project supported compliance with permits
and the administrative order, social impacts, administrative
considerations, and anticipated construction costs. The
city also conducted modeling to determine how much
wastewater treatment facility, pumping station, and CSO
control projects would reduce CSO volume and flooding, as
well as how much infrastructure would be renewed.
From the prioritized category-specific lists, New Bedford
then chose projects for its integrated plan based on
affordability, alignment with other city initiatives or projects,
and necessity for maintaining reliable operation of the
sewers and wastewater treatment facility. The city selected
projects from all eight categories. The city also proposed a
schedule that equitably distributed projects across 20 years
(2017-2036) to avoid large rate increases in any given year.
Projected Distribution of 20-Year Integrated
Capital Plan Costs by Category
| Wastewater treatment facility
Wastewater pumping
stations
Combined sewer overflow
| Wet weather sewer
| General sewer
Stormwater
Flood control structures
Organizational/institutional
The capital budget for	Approach to Project
New Bedford's final	Implementation and Monitoring
recommended plan
totaled about $260
million over 20 years
(see graphic below).
More than half of the
total cost (i.e., $143
million) was for combined
sewer projects; another
third was for wastewater
infrastructure renewal
projects. The schedule
focused first on infrastructure repair and renewal to eliminate
illicit connections to the storm sewer system, reduce
infiltration and inflow into the combined sewer system,
and eliminate a CSO outfall. New Bedford's recommended
plan included optimizing the existing wastewater treatment
facility to maintain low nitrogen effluent levels, rather than
installing new equipment.
New Bedford projected that the plan would reduce CSO
volume by an additional 82 million gallons from the city's
2016 levels, resulting in a 97 percent reduction from its 1990
levels. It prioritized CSO reduction to Clarks Cove, which
is the most sensitive receiving water. At the time of plan
completion, New Bedford expected to achieve a 48 percent
reduction in total nitrogen discharge and a substantial
reduction in bacteria discharged during rain events to the
Acushnet River, Clarks Cove, and New Bedford Harbor.
Results
New Bedford submitted its Long Term CSO Control and
Integrated Capital Improvements Plan to EPA in 2017. A
2019 consent order formally implemented the first phase
of the plan that included projects for the first seven years.
The city started several integrated plan projects before the
2019 order, including equipment upgrades at the wastewater
treatment facility, two sewer separation projects, two
pumping station upgrades, and a flow monitoring program.
Project Categories
¦	Wastewater treatment
facility
¦	Pumping stations
¦	CSO controls
¦	Wet weather sewer
For more information, visit EPA's integrated planning Report to Congress webpage at:
https://www.epa.gov/npdes/inteqrated-planninq-municipal-stormwater-and-wastewater
General sewer
Stormwater controls
Flood control structures
Organizational/
institutional
SEPA
EPA-832-F-21-012 I June 2021

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