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Beyond the Overflows

The Problem: 50 Sewage Overflows a Year

Posted on June 3, 2025

By Charlotte Harvey
UConn Journalism

People in the 21st cen­tu­ry expect sewage sys­tems to work. They expect them to carry waste away and break down that waste safe­ly. They expect not to have to think about that.

But what if that isn’t your norm? What if, on a rainy day, untreat­ed waste moves the wrong way out of the flood­ing street pipes, back­ing up onto streets and into base­ments?

Many of the res­i­dents of the North End of Hartford know that real­i­ty and have known it for decades. Every time a storm comes and raw sewage backs up into their base­ments, they think about it.

Fundamentally, it comes down to anoth­er one of those things we expect the gov­ern­ment to pro­vide in exchange for taxes: infra­struc­ture.

Mixed sewage and rain­wa­ter rou­tine­ly over­flows into the Park River, and then on to the Connecticut River. Since the mid-1990s, the agency that man­ages water and sewage for Hartford, the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC), has been slow­ly sep­a­rat­ing stormwa­ter from sewage pipes. But mixed waste still over­flows from 38 dif­fer­ent out­fall points in the sys­tem. These over­flow points carry waste that comes from 170 com­bined sewer over­flow (CSO) “reg­u­la­tors” in the Metropolitan District Commission’s under­ground sys­tem. These over­flows are usu­al­ly trig­gered dur­ing rain­storms. In the 1970s, there were approx­i­mate­ly 170 CSO reg­u­la­tors in the sys­tem that dis­charged through 47 out­fall loca­tions to the receiv­ing streams that include the Park River. Before to the imple­men­ta­tion of the cur­rent pro­gram, the esti­mat­ed vol­ume of CSO dis­charged through these out­falls in a typ­i­cal year was 974 mil­lion gal­lons. The 47 out­fall spots have been reduced to 38 out­falls today, accord­ing to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

The Park River takes on com­bined sewer over­flows in mul­ti­ple places. Here it flows into the cul­verts under Farmington Avenue in Hartford’s West End. From here it will carry the river under­ground, still tak­ing on over­flows from storm drains. Photo by Justin Doughty

In the year from May 15, 2024 to May 15, 2025, CSOs over­flowed in Hartford 50 times, accord­ing to the state’s pub­lic data­base that tracks every over­flow. Between May 8 and 10, for exam­ple, more than a mil­lion gal­lons of mixed waste and rain­wa­ter was auto­mat­i­cal­ly divert­ed into the North Branch of the Park River dur­ing a 2‑inch rain­storm. Last August 20, 2024, about 2 mil­lion gal­lons of over­flows went into the Connecticut River.

As the MDC has sep­a­rat­ed pipes and closed many of the over­flow points, gal­lons from the over­flows have decreased in the last two decades, from about 974 mil­lion gal­lons each year in 2006 to 488 mil­lion gal­lons of com­bined raw sewage and stormwa­ter in 2022, accord­ing to the envi­ron­men­tal group Save the Sound.

But there is much still to do. Waste is still flood­ing untreat­ed into the rivers dur­ing storms, and the work to cor­rect over­flows will take many more years, accord­ing to legal agree­ments and plans by the state and the MDC.

The MDC is also build­ing a giant tun­nel to store untreat­ed waste after storms. The tun­nel is designed to stop flood­ing and elim­i­nate most over­flows near Wethersfield Cove, a pop­u­lar swim­ming and boat­ing inlet near Old Wethersfield. Eight of Hartford’s 38 CSOs flow into Wethersfield Cove via the Folly Brook con­duit in the south­ern end of Hartford.

The Connecticut River Conservancy, which mon­i­tors water health on the length of the river, says of Wethersfield Cove: “If it has rained in the past 1–2 days, this site is some­times clean for swim­ming and some­times clean for boat­ing.”

Hartford is one of Connecticut’s old­est sew­er­age sys­tems, set up as a com­bined sys­tem to mix stormwa­ter and waste in the same pipe, explained Graham Stevens, the chief of the Bureau of Water Protection and Land Reuse at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental pro­tec­tion.

“They’re basi­cal­ly the pre­de­ces­sor to our mod­ern way of man­ag­ing sew­ers and stormwa­ter,” he said. “The early sewer sys­tems were always built in cities because they want­ed a way to man­age the waste so it wasn’t a pub­lic health nui­sance.”

Construction on Hartford’s sew­er­age and water man­age­ment sys­tem began in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The goal was fair­ly sim­ple: move waste­water and stormwa­ter away from inhab­it­ed areas. “Away” meant the Park River, which drains into the Connecticut River. The waste poured into these rivers with no treat­ment.

Attorney Cynthia Jennings has been an activist for health­i­er liv­ing con­di­tions in the North End, where she has lived her whole life. With a new back­flow pre­ven­ter in her base­ment, her base­ment final­ly is dry. Photo by Sofia Acosta

Then, the rea­son­ing went, the waste would be dilut­ed and the sys­tem would pro­tect human health and not harm the envi­ron­ment.

Today, these cen­tu­ry-plus-year-old com­bined sewer pipes carry water from the storm drains from the street and from the plumb­ing inside build­ings to a sewage treat­ment plant, where it is fil­tered and breaks down. Water from sinks, dish­wash­ers, show­ers, and toi­lets— “waste­water,” or “sewage”—mixes with water from the storm drains, trav­el­ing togeth­er toward the sewage treat­ment plant.

However, even though these sys­tems are no longer designed to inten­tion­al­ly dis­charge untreat­ed waste­water into bod­ies of water, it does still hap­pen.

Cynthia Jennings is an attor­ney who was for­tu­nate last year to receive a state grant to install a back­flow pre­ven­ter in her Hartland Street base­ment. She said flood­ing was rou­tine for her fam­i­ly from child­hood, both in her cur­rent house and the one where she grew up, on near­by Cambridge Street.

Many long­time res­i­dents inter­viewed for this series said they lived with waste­water back­ups for much of their lives.

“You would see it every day,” she said, “because the water never went out. And the fire depart­ment wouldn’t pump the water, because it wasn’t water – there was  other stuff in it. If it was pure water, the fire depart­ment would pump it out, but… if it’s  any­thing in there besides water they can’t pump it out,” she said.

Asked who did pump the water out, Jennings respond­ed, “Nobody. Unless you paid the money, and we didn’t have the money.”


TOP IMAGE: Trucks remove waste­water from Sharon Lewis’ home in Hartford, Connecticut, Dec. 9, 2022. (Photo cour­tesy of Sharon Lewis)

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ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Eight journalism students at the University of Connecticut spent three months reporting on the combined sewer overflow repair project in Hartford and getting to know some of the real-life, sometimes devastating impact this pollution has exacted on the people who have endured it for decades.

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