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James Mol
A hundred years ago, cities built one pipe for sewage and rainwater together. On a dry day everything goes to the treatment plant. In a heavy rain the pipe can’t keep up, so it is built to overflow to the river, because the alternative is sewage backing up into basements. That is a combined sewer overflow, or CSO.
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Springfield, Chicopee and Holyoke have them, upstream of us. Hartford has them, downstream. Suffield, East Granby and Windsor Locks have separate sewers and no overflows. We are in the middle.
How Much Goes Into The River?
Last year the three Massachusetts cities put 783 million gallons into the river above us, on twelve days. The year before, 543 million. The year before that, nearly a billion. The difference is rain, not pipes: a dry year is a low number, a wet year is a high number. Springfield is more than half of it.
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The Metropolitan District (Hartford’s regional sewer authority), below us, put 797 million gallons in by itself in 2024, more than the three Massachusetts cities combined. It enters the river 15 to 20 miles downstream of Windsor Locks.
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What is in it: mostly rain. Engineers estimate roughly 99 percent stormwater in a typical overflow, and the river dilutes it more than a hundred times over before it reaches us. Those are estimates; nobody measures it at Suffield.
How Dangerous It Is
The only regular testing on our stretch is by volunteers from the Connecticut River Conservancy, every week from June through August. The nearest active site is just above the state line, below Springfield’s outfalls. Since 2012: in dry weather, nine in ten samples pass the swimming standard. After rain, four in ten fail it, and one in three is unsafe for any contact.
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The surprising part: big storms are not the dangerous ones. They flush the river. 2023, the flood year with nearly a billion gallons discharged, had no failed samples. It is the small storm after a dry spell that spikes the bacteria.
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The rule is simple. Stay out of the river for 48 hours after it rains. Bacteria die off in days; there is no lasting contamination from overflows, and no documented fish kill or illness on our stretch. Debris after a storm is real and unpleasant, but it is not a measure of bacteria.
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Nobody tests the water at Suffield or Windsor Locks. The sites at Thompsonville and East Windsor show no results in the past year, and no state agency monitors bacteria here.
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This is not new and it is not ignored. The EPA has had Holyoke and Springfield under federal orders since the 1990s, and Chicopee under a court decree since 2006. Springfield adopted a 20-year plan in 2014 and finished a $137 million pump station in 2023. Holyoke signed a court decree in 2023 that runs to 2037. Together the three cities have spent about $750 million and cut their overflows by half to 85 percent.
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Hartford has been under a federal decree since 2006, has committed $1.7 billion, has cut its overflows about in half, and is switching on a four-mile storage tunnel under the city this fall. Hartford-area customers have paid for it on every water bill since 2007.
EPA Region 1 begins enforcement against Holyoke (1995) and Springfield (1996-97). Massachusetts is not a delegated state, so the EPA, not the state, issues and enforces these permits.
U.S. v. Chicopee: federal consent decree, 20-year schedule. Same year: U.S. v. Metropolitan District (Hartford), $850,000 penalty; Hartford voters approve $800 million for the Clean Water Project.
EPA orders Springfield to plan an 85 percent reduction (2008). Springfield adopts a 20-year Integrated Wastewater Plan (2014): six phases, $447 million, target 441 million gallons a year down to 59 million.
Second Hartford referendum, $800 million. Connecticut enacts its Sewage Right-to-Know law.
Massachusetts enacts two-hour public notification of every overflow; first full reporting year 2023.
Springfield completes the $137 million York Street pump station and three new river crossings, doubling pumping capacity. U.S. v. Holyoke consent decree: $27 million program, separation complete by 2037.
Hartford’s federal decree modified: sewer backups eliminated by Dec. 31, 2026; remaining program to 2040 and beyond. EPA’s $19 million grant to Holyoke cancelled in May.
Hartford’s $138 million tunnel pump station completed Oct. 2; the 4-mile, 41-million-gallon South Hartford tunnel expected in service late 2026. Springfield says in July it has no funding for its next overflow phases.
About $250 million of work remains in Massachusetts, due between 2035 and 2037, and more than $1 billion in Hartford, running to the 2050s. Even when every plan is complete, about 220 million gallons a year will still overflow above us in a typical year, because the plans are built to a design storm, not to zero.
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The plans are written and the orders are signed. What is missing is money. Springfield said in July 2026 it has no funding for its next phases; Holyoke lost a $19 million federal grant in 2025.
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Connecticut cannot order Massachusetts to do anything. The EPA and the Department of Justice hold the orders. The cities pay through water and sewer bills, with state and federal grants when they can get them.
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Two things nobody does today: Massachusetts’ two-hour overflow alerts go to Massachusetts towns, not to Connecticut. And nobody tests the water on our side of the state line. The Enfield test site has not been testing water since April 2022.
Sign Up For Overflow Alert
Springfield → https://www.springfieldalerts.com
Holyoke → https://www.holyoke.org (search CSO notifications)
Chicopee → https://www.chicopeema.gov (Water Pollution Control)
Water test results → https://www.isitclean.us
Connecticut spills map → https://portal.ct.gov/deep (sewage spill map)
You have to sign up with each city separately. No Connecticut agency relays these yet.