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The State of Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay
MWRA Environmental Quality
Department
Massachusetts Bay
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Now that the Boston Harbor Project has ended, there is little doubt that it has benefited the marine environment and the people of the region. A major part of the project was building an underground outfall tunnel that carries MWRA communities' treated wastewater 9.5 miles out into Massachusetts Bay. when MWRA began discharging into the Bay, a water quality monitoring program was implemented to assess any effects of treated sewage on the Bay. As part of this program, MWRA monitors bacterial water quality at monitoring locations surrounding the sewage outfall and elsewhere in and around Massachusetts Bay.
The Ambient Monitoring Program has enabled MWRA to better understand the natural variability in the Bay's water quality. MWRA has joined up with the Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System (GoMOOS), who owns a buoy that monitors water quality upstream of the outfall, off Cape Ann. This water quality information allows MWRA to distinguish the impact of the outfall from other environmental factors.
MONITORING DATA
The annual Outfall Monitoring Overview contains monitoring data from Massachusetts Bay. Over the years, monitoring has revealed that:
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The quality of the effluent (treated wastewater)
has improved, due to better control of pollution sources.
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| • | Chlorophyll, plankton, and dissolved oxygen levels are normal. |
| • | Concentrations of contaminants in sediment samples near the outfall are low and do not vary much. Pictures of sediments near the outfall show healthy, normal communities. |
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State of the Bay 2007 by the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies Ambient Monitoring Program Useful Links Literature List Outfall Papers (abstracts) |
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