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Residents and environmental groups press lawmakers for timeline to end combined sewer overflows
Summary
Watershed groups, residents and municipal advocates urged the Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources to advance bills that set timelines and targets to reduce combined sewer overflows, citing large annual discharges, health risks and environmental‑justice impacts.
Advocates, municipal representatives and watershed groups urged the Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources to report favorably on several bills that would require planning and timelines to cut or eliminate combined sewer overflows (CSOs) that send untreated or minimally treated sewage into rivers and streams during storms.
"These discharges are not just an environmental nuisance. They are a public health crisis," Patrick Herron, executive director of the Mystic River Watershed Association, told the committee, describing research linking CSO events to gastrointestinal illness and noting disproportionate impacts in environmental justice communities. Herron and other witnesses asked the…
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