Water Authority Proposes Another Weak Plan That Would Continue Sewage Dumping in Charles River (Press Release)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 4, 2026
Contact: Stefan Geller, Senior Communications Manager
Phone: 781-572-9341
Email: sgeller@crwa.org
BOSTON, MA – Following a wave of public outrage in October over a proposed plan to allow for sewage to continue to be dumped into the Charles River forever, the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) proposed a new plan to its Board of Directors today, representing an improvement but falling short of eliminating combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and subjecting Boston area residents to a future of sewage dumping in larger rain storms.
“This new plan is marginally better than the old one, but it will still result in frequent sewage discharges,” said CRWA Executive Director Emily Norton. “According to MWRA’s own numbers, for the difference of under four dollars a month per household, we can virtually eliminate sewage discharges. Why wouldn’t we do that?”
CSOs are a key source of contamination to the Charles and are becoming more frequent as our climate changes. In these outdated sewer systems, stormwater and household/industrial wastewater are collected in the same pipes to be conveyed to a wastewater treatment plant, but during heavy or intense rainstorms, the combined system cannot handle the excess polluted water and releases it into the river.
MWRA and the City of Cambridge are legally required to carry out an extensive CSO planning effort to address 9 of the 10 remaining CSO outfalls on the Charles. They were supposed to submit a preferred project option by the end of 2025, though the deadline was extended to April 2026 following the public pushback to their initial plan, which proposed an increase in sewage dumping. The national precedent for these plans, known as Long Term Control Plans, is to reduce the amount of sewage being discharged into a waterbody.
MWRA’s proposal in October would have required the state to downgrade the Charles to a “Class B(CSO)” water body, allowing it to dump sewage into the river forever. Today’s proposal would instead mean sewage overflows would occur during and following rainstorms that bring slightly over three inches of precipitation. To achieve this, the proposal calls for the implementation of several CSO storage tanks and partial separation of the sewage and stormwater pipes. The plan falls short of recommending a large CSO storage tunnel, a practice used in many cities, including here along the South Boston beaches, that would essentially eliminate CSOs into the river.
Using an inflation rate of 2.5%, the MWRA team projected different project costs in 2050 based on the level of pollution reduction. Under the newly recommended plan, ratepayers would pay an additional $43 per household annually ($24 in 2026, assuming the same 2.5% inflation rate). To virtually eliminate sewage discharges, ratepayers would pay an additional $125 per household annually ($69 in 2026), a difference of $82 a year ($45 in 2026).
“This proposal is certainly an improvement, though it still does not set the bar high enough,” said CRWA Climate Resilience Director Julie Wood. “Now is the time to invest in fully eliminating CSOs to the Charles. Spending ratepayer money to invest in infrastructure that continues to dump untreated sewage into our rivers is basically flushing our money down the toilet!”
In April 2025, CRWA launched its Cut The Crap campaign to create public awareness around CSOs and generate pressure on the MWRA and the City of Cambridge to stop sewage from polluting the Charles. Since then, thousands of people have signed petitions and sent emails to the MWRA, urging them to “cut the crap” being dumped into the Charles River.