Woonsocket mayor, Public Works director respond to lawsuit
WOONSOCKET, R.I. (WJAR) — Woonsocket officials are responding to a lawsuit issued by the Rhode Island Attorney General and Department of Environmental Management regarding what they say is illegal sewage discharge into the Blackstone River.
On Wednesday, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha and DEM director Terry Gray filed a joint civil lawsuit against the city of Woonsocket, Synagro, LLC, and Jacobs Engineering over partially treated sewage being discharged into the Blackstone River from the Woonsocket wastewater treatment plant. The 31-page complaint accuses the trio of violating multiple state environmental laws, as well as its permit.
That permit requires all wastewater generated by the facility to be fully treated before being flowing into the river. The permit was issued through Rhode Island's Clean Water Act.
The facility is owned by the city of Woonsocket, which contracts Jacobs to help operate and maintain it, and uses Synagro to run a nearby incinerator, which processes sludge and solid waste brought in from other treatment plants in the region.
Speaking with NBC 10 Thursday, Woonsocket Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt and Director of Public Works Director Steven D'Agostino called the lawsuit "disappointing."
D'Agostino, who has led the department for a decade, claims the core of problem stems from aging equipment on the Synagro side of things.
"The equipment [there] is coming to the end of its life and needs to be refurbished," he told NBC 10. "It's going to need an upgrade, and a serious influx of cash. We have always been, and will continue to be, proactive. We are very conscious of the impact we have on the river."
The river hasn't been immune to this issue recently. The complaint claims at least three times untreated sewage has flowed into the Blackstone in the last 12 months. One incident happened earlier this month, and was caught on camera by a runner.
"The scent was just 10 times worse than it normally is [that day]," said John Berard, the Woonsocket resident and environmental activist who recorded the video. "It's normally just the normal operations here, but what I smelled that day was raw sewage."
Jacobs is the Texas-based team helping run the Wastewater Treatment Facility. NBC 10 has reached out multiple times for comment, but hasn't heard back yet.
Baldelli-Hunt emphasized Thursday the facility isn't just a Woonsocket one, but a regional one. She claims just 10% of the sludge treated there is from her city.
"We are basically the dumping ground for basically the entire state [of Rhode Island,], parts of Connecticut and parts of Massachusetts," she said. "This facility is handling what most communities don't want to handle."
The mayor and her team are now considering a wide variety of options about the facility's future. In a statement sent late Wednesday night, she noted, "all options are on the table now including exploring whether or not the City should continue operating a regional WWTP and revert to treating the City’s needs alone."
She maintains the wastewater treatment facility is not the issue, and welcomes to the idea of AG Neronha seeing it firsthand.
"I want the AG to tour the plant," she told NBC 10 News. "I hope he gets educated as to what's going on there, because I don't think it was fair to the city."
In Wednesday's press conference, Neronha said he's aware the city is facing troubles, and didn't want to burden the city taxpayers, but felt "enough is enough" and it was time to take action.