Barnstable Urges Dismissal Of Lawsuit Over Pollution In Lewis Bay

BARNSTABLE, MA — Town officials asked a federal judge Friday to dismiss a lawsuit in U.S. District Court accusing Barnstable of violating the federal Clean Water Act.

According to the complaint filed in February by the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), the town's water pollution control facility is polluting Lewis Bay. The foundation argues the plant's levels of nitrogen discharge are too high, and that waste water is traveling underground into Lewis Bay. According to the Foundation, the discharge is feeding large algae blooms, which are lowering water quality and harming marine life.

Town Manager Mark Ells denied the town has violated any environmental regulations. He said the town already has a plan in place to improve water quality throughout town and said the CLF's lawsuit jeopardizes the town's efforts to implement a 30-year wastewater management plan.

"The town is fully committed to protecting and improving the environmental health of the waters surrounding Cape Cod," Ells said in a statement. "To do so, the town has begun investing over a billion dollars to implement its thirty-year plan to upgrade its wastewater infrastructure in order to protect Barnstable’s natural resources. While we would prefer that CLF work with the town as a partner toward achieving these important goals instead of diverting the Town’s resources from these efforts, we will vigorously defend against CLF’s misguided attempt to impose inapplicable federal requirements on our Town and its residents."

But the lawsuit argued Barnstable never had permission from the EPA to discharge pollutants from the Hyannis facility into the Lewis Bay Watershed System. The group also said Barnstable plans to dramatically expand operations at the facility in the coming years, and the town's 30-year plan to address wastewater pollution doesn't act fast enough to fix a large issue.

"Without an order from this court, the ecological toll of Barnstable's unlawful pollution of the nation's waters will only grow,' the lawsuit read. "Barnstable has plans dramatically to expand the Hyannis Facility in coming years, increasing the flow of effluent through its sand beds, and thus the load of nitrogen it will discharge into the rivers, creeks, ponds, bays, and estuaries of the Lewis Bay Watershed System."

But in the town's motion to dismiss the case, Barnstable's attorney David Lyons said the pollutants are not reaching the ocean fast enough to be in violation of federal environmental laws. He argued the CLF's claim that discharges from the treatment plant will take between two and three decades before they reach the ocean and do not meet Supreme Court standards of what constitutes "direct discharge." Town officials also said the plant received all required permits under state law.