Deadlines Pushed Back for $170M Sewage Separation Project

By Justin Doughty and Sofia Acosta
UConn Journalism

Since 1994, the MDC has been legal­ly bound to elim­i­nate dis­charg­ing untreat­ed sewage into rivers through a series of con­sent orders with the state. The lat­est of the con­sent orders, signed January 15, 2025, adjusts dead­lines for pre­vi­ous­ly con­tract­ed projects and adds some new projects.

This order replaced the mod­i­fied order from 2023, which had updat­ed one from 2022.

The over­see­ing agency is the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, which is charged with enforc­ing the fed­er­al Clean Water Act. The con­sent orders have been mod­i­fied sev­er­al times to deal with delays. Sometimes, as the new mod­i­fied order lays out, projects deemed too large have been bro­ken down into mul­ti­ple, small­er projects, all with adjust­ed time­lines.

In the new agree­ment, the MDC was given 19 more months, until July 2026, to com­plete the sewer sep­a­ra­tion projects in the Westland Street and Windsor Street areas. Overflows in that area drain into the North branch of the Park River. Previously the dead­line for sep­a­rat­ing those pipes was December 2024.

New projects out­lined in the order include sewer sep­a­ra­tion for “up to 160” pri­vate prop­er­ties in the North End. The MDC will fix out­dat­ed pip­ing on pri­vate prop­er­ty, sav­ing each home­own­er up to $15,000.

This was a major change from pre­vi­ous plans, accord­ing to Nick Salemi, the spokesman for the MDC.

“What we did, what was not allowed in pre­vi­ous years—which was the big change—was to be able to do the pri­vate prop­er­ty improve­ments to people’s homes,” Salemi said in an inter­view. He said “a lot of what we do” is cov­ered by grants through Connecticut’s Clean Water Fund, admin­is­tered by DEEP. The fund gives grants and loans to cities and towns for work to improve waste­water treate­ment.

In addi­tion to pri­vate prop­er­ty reha­bil­i­ta­tion, the mod­i­fied con­sent order sped up a num­ber of sewer sep­a­ra­tion projects, includ­ing those on Woodstock and Branford Streets and anoth­er project on Tower Avenue. Over $10 mil­lion worth of infra­struc­ture improve­ments have been com­plet­ed so far on these projects, the MDC announced in spring 2025.

“We actu­al­ly got a lot of the work done ahead of time and expe­dit­ed it,” Salemi said.

Other projects slat­ed to be fin­ished in the com­ing years are unchanged from pre­vi­ous con­sent orders. These include sewer sep­a­ra­tion in the Blue Hills neigh­bor­hood of the North End and in the town of Bloomfield, which is part of the MDC sys­tem. These are expect­ed to be done between 2030 and 2040.

Changing out pip­ing locat­ed beneath lay­ers of con­crete or asphalt is expen­sive, time con­sum­ing, and dis­rup­tive to those that live in the area.   

“We’re going to be on your street, cut­ting out the road, block­ing you from going to get your kids.  You have to park off site.  You have to walk to your car,” said Graham Stevens, chief of the Bureau of Water Protection and Land Reuse at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, in an inter­view at the DEEP head­quar­ters in Hartford.

The price tag for these projects is great because of the amount of time and labor need­ed to com­plete them. Salemi said many peo­ple com­plain that they can’t see the improve­ments, most of them being under­ground or out of sight at the treat­ment plant in the South Meadows area. “It’s there, but it’s out of sight, out of mind,” he said.

For many peo­ple, the long time­frames are dif­fi­cult to grasp. Stevens said the state is respon­si­ble for updat­ing the pub­lic on the progress of these projects. Some local res­i­dents may not have been born when the orig­i­nal con­sent order was signed. He said state offi­cials must “reach out to the com­mu­ni­ty and explain what’s com­ing” to those who may not have even lived in the city when the plan was made.

Nisha Patel, the direc­tor of the Water Planning and Management Division at DEEP, noted that sewer sep­a­ra­tion is a huge under­tak­ing that takes gen­er­a­tions to com­plete.

“CSOs are such a com­plex and such a big prob­lem that elim­i­na­tion takes decades,” she said “even when you’re being real­ly pro­gres­sive and real­ly pri­or­i­tiz­ing their removal.”

As the con­sent orders over the years have doc­u­ment­ed, dead­lines change to match the real­i­ties of these long projects. Thus far, the MDC appears to be on track with the lat­est dead­lines. Only time will tell if the MDC is able to uphold its agree­ment out­lined in the con­sent order.

The Cost

The total cost of the project to sep­a­rate sewage from stormwa­ter pipes and to store waste totals $170 mil­lion, and the last of the work is pro­ject­ed to be fin­ished around 2040.

In the com­plex and hilly city of Hartford it takes care­ful plan­ning and solid fund­ing to under­go upgrade recon­struc­tion projects. Although the MDC has been work­ing with the EPA and DEEP to address CSOs since the 1990s, var­i­ous fac­tors come into play when it comes to the time­line of see­ing results.

Starting any dis­rup­tive projects in cities, such as road con­struc­tion repairs, pub­lic tran­sit upgrades, the mak­ing of parks and build­ings, and util­i­ty upgrades like water and sewage line replace­ments take care­ful and thought­ful plan­ning.

Director of the Water and Management Division for DEEP Nisha Patel puts these tech­ni­cal and prac­ti­cal com­pli­ca­tions into con­text for any big city, but specif­i­cal­ly Hartford.

“Say I can’t dig up at Elm Street and dis­rupt the day-to-day lives of every­one to ulti­mate­ly sep­a­rate those lines, or you don’t have enough money for it,” she said. “There’s some other tech­ni­cal chal­lenge, like the ground won’t sup­port two sep­a­rate pipes.”

She sug­gest­ed that such chal­lenges require brain­storm­ing for other ways to solve the prob­lem.

There is no ques­tion that MDC is respon­si­ble for elim­i­nat­ing CSOs, but the agency has said it is not a flood con­trol agency. Yet two state laws passed in 2023 and 2024 require the state and the MDC to work togeth­er to stop flood­ing and to help res­i­dents who have suf­fered from floods.

Nearly $9 mil­lion in grant funds were dis­trib­uted to res­i­dents for sewer back­up pre­ven­ters that would keep their base­ments from flood­ing with untreat­ed waste. The Blue Hills Civic Association was given $75,000 to admin­is­ter the grant pro­gram.

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TOP IMAGE: This map shows sew­er­age sys­tem repairs planned in Hartford’s North End neigh­bor­hoods. Areas with­in red bor­ders are where the Metropolitan District Commission is sep­a­rat­ing storm pipes from sewer pipes, and areas with­in blue lines where it is lin­ing and repair­ing pipes. Map cour­tesy of MDC