Swampscott King's Beach Cleanup Pressure Increases, Progress Minimal

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — As Swampscott officials detailed the millions of dollars the town has spent on source contamination elimination repairs to the sewer pipes that feed Stacey's Brook and King's Beach in the most recent consent decree compliance report to the state Department of Environment Protection, there is the sobering reality is that all of the work is having a negligible effect on actually making the beach safer for town residents.

"Frankly, much to my disappointment, in spite of our best efforts, we're no closer to seeing that beach brought back to a productive reuse than we were six years ago," Swampscott Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald told the Select Board on Wednesday night. "The data continues to confound. We have a nebulous system of pipes and interconnections and on-point pollution sources that impair the water quality at King's Beach."

Andrea Amour, a member of the Facebook group "Save King's Beach" — which she said has grown from 645 to more than 1,100 members in recent months amid the renewed focus on the state's most polluted beach — said that the beach was unsafe for swimming nearly the entire summer amid heavy rains and a series of sewage overflow discharges from the city of Lynn.

"This was the worst safety record on record across the region," she said during Wednesday's public comment. "Ninety-one percent of days at King's Beach this summer were unsafe in terms of the bacteria content in the water — which is a fancy way of saying there is feces in the water."

The consent decree compliance report is posted on the town website with Fitzgerald telling the Select Board that he wants to provide a presentation within the next six weeks with the town's engineering firm, Kleinfelder, to provide an explanation of the mitigation measures and discuss the next steps.

"We need broader state and federal assistance," he said. "We intend to amplify that request and we will continue to press for that partnership.

"I do think we are closer than ever to getting that local, state and federal partnership but it's going to require a few more careful conversations."

Fitzgerald said those conversations include following up on a letter to the state Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs on expedited permitting for a proposed extended outfall pipe at Stacey's Brook and moving forward on an ultraviolet light treatment system designed to eradicate the bacteria in the water coming out of the pipes.

"The UV system addresses the bacteria but it doesn't address the forever chemicals," he said. "It doesn't address pharmaceuticals and all sorts of other impairments that leech out of our drainage pipes. Certainly, we are concerned about those issues as well."

Amour said the increase in the Save King's Beach membership shows "this community really, really cares about this issue" and pressed the Select Board on town officials to "keep our foot on the gas on it."

She requested that signage be placed at the Stacey's Brook outfall warning visitors that the water is, essentially, never safe there, more signage at King's Beach and other town beaches about the water quality risks that occur after heavy rain events because of stormwater runoff, and an extending testing season that goes beyond Labor Day — she recommended testing April through November.

"Beach season is over now and testing will stop," she said. "This is a big deficit in this community because people don't stop using the beach, pretty much, ever. Surfers come. Kids go in the water. People are not going to stop using the beach.

"We are talking about kids walking through raw sewage in our town. I think that's, honestly, embarrassing."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)