Renewed Hope For Swampscott King's Beach Cleanup 'Success Story'

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — Momentum could be building for a long-term solution toward transforming King's Beach in Lynn and Swampscott from one of the most polluted in the state to a true summer destination on the North Shore.

Save the Harbor/Save the Bay Executive Director Chris Mancini told Patch following an extensive presentation from Swampscott Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald on the possibilities at Wednesday's Select Board meeting that he sees a path to cleaning up the beach for the first time in a very long time.

"There is a lot of positivity right now that by the end of this fall — if I'm being optimistic — we will have a road map to a success story," Mancini said. "For the first time in I don't know how many decades it looks like there is significant progress."

Mancini said much of that progress has come from advocacy groups, such as his own, Friends of Lynn and Nahant Beach and the new group Save King's Beach, working with state and local officials to place urgency on the beach that annually ranks as one of the worst in Save the Harbor/Save the Bay's annual report on beach water quality.

"Last year it got a 68 percent safety rate," he said. "That means it's closed a third of the time. But the way testing works you don't know when it's going to be closed or whether it should have been closed until after the fact.

"My running joke is that when you see a red flag it means don't go swimming yesterday."

That uncertainty means the expansive beach in what should be a prime location just north of Boston is hardly ever used at all.

"It's a shame because there are some days when it's OK to swim but it's so unknown we want to tell people to stay out of it all the time for safety," Mancini said.

Fitzgerald on Wednesday night updated the Select Board on measures being taken to eventually change that.

Fitzgerald said that pipe lining and repair work — called illicit discharge detection elimination— currently being done on the pipes leading to the beach is on pace to make it 90 percent safe for swimming on "dry weather days" in five years from the Swampscott perspective, but that it will take that collaborative approach on the Lynn side to make sure the beach is truly useable.

"We can do all this wonderful work in Swampscott and still have failure," Fitzgerald cautioned. "For me, that would be incredibly frustrating. Incredibly depressing. That we would spend all these dollars and still have the same situation we have today."

Potential more permanent solutions being investigated are a 45,000-foot extension of the pipe, which would essentially push the polluted water further out to sea where it could dilute more thoroughly, or an ultraviolet disinfection system like the one in use in Newport, R.I. capable of treating up to 5 million gallons of water per day.

"We just have to make this a priority," Fitzgerald said. "We have to, as a region, say: 'Enough.' This is a problem we can solve. We've got to work with our state, and federal, officials and say, 'Hey, we're going to put a shovel-ready project before you and we want you to help us solve that problem.

"Give this region a sense that this historic resource area will be brought back to what it once was."

Mancini allows the King's Beach area is uniquely problematic from a bacteria contamination perspective because the system involves "too many variables" including the Stacey's Brook drainage system.

"Never go in Stacey's Brook," Mancini urged after a recent incident where someone got stuck in that area. "That is the belly of the beast there.

"But there are other variables that make it so difficult. We are in the biggest drought we've seen in I don't know how long and the bacteria on the beach is the highest we've seen in five or six years."

He said, ideally, the beach is eventually clean enough to where closures would go from a third of the summer to the occasional day or two here and there because of stormwater runoff from high-impact weather events.

"I am hopeful because I am seeing people in a room together that we're getting closer than we've been (to a fix) for a long time," he said. "There is federal money out there waiting for shovel-ready projects. This could be a relatively quick turnaround if we do this well.

"Our hope is that one of these engineering solutions proves effective and we can go to the federal funding, or go to the state, and we can get this funding to get King's Beach where it should be."

Mancini said the cleanup is not only an environmental justice issue, but an economic one as well since a healthy and vibrant King's Beach could drive business opportunities for both Lynn and Swampscott.

"It would be a beautiful thing," he said. "And it's the right thing to do."

(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.)