State officials discuss water infrastructure funding
Participants at Wednesday’s discussion on water infrastructure funding, which was organized by the Franklin Regional Council of Governments, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and Berkshire Regional Planning Commission. Screenshot
Published: 2/25/2021 6:42:28 PM
State and local officials met remotely Wednesday night to discuss the importance of locating funding to support local and regional water suppliers and treatment facilities.
“While we often don’t think enough about our water and wastewater infrastructure, and it’s sometimes not the most exciting topic on the table, I think it’s easy to agree that the work of local and regional wastewater utilities has never been more critical,” said Kathleen Theoharides, secretary of the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
State officials discuss water infrastructure funding
Participants at Wednesday’s discussion on water infrastructure funding. SCREENSHOT
Published: 2/25/2021 2:51:27 PM
State and local officials met remotely Wednesday night to discuss the importance of locating funds for local and regional water suppliers and treatment facilities.
“While we often don’t think enough about our water and wastewater infrastructure, and it’s sometimes not the most exciting topic on the table, I think it’s easy to agree that the work of local and regional wastewater utilities has never been more critical,” said Kathleen Theoharides, secretary of the state Executive Office of Energy and Affairs.
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Barnstable’s sewage treatment plant is at the center of a new lawsuit filed by a Boston-based environmental group.
The Conservation Law Foundation, which filed the lawsuit in federal court in Boston, said that the facility in Hyannis is polluting Lewis Bay with nutrients such as nitrogen that degrade water quality and cause serious algae outbreaks.
“It doesn t really do the job,” Chris Kilian, Vice President of Strategic Litigation at CLF, said of the facility. “It operates like a giant septic system right now in the sense that unlike lots of other wastewater treatment facilities, the Hyannis facility releases its effluent into sand beds.” That effluent, he said, makes its way through the Cape’s sandy soil into the watershed.
WELLFLEET More and more businesses are looking at ways of going green. On the Cape, that could also eventually include cemeteries.
The town s Cemetery Commission invited commissioners from other Cape towns including Brewster, Eastham, Falmouth, Orleans, Provincetown and Wellfleet to take part in a Zoom call Feb. 17 to discuss green burials and what it would take to offer them on the Cape.
Green burial options forgo embalming with formaldehyde
While traditional burials involve embalming a body with formaldehyde before putting it into a casket and then inside a concrete vault, green burials forgo the embalming and vaults and require that a body be buried in biodegradable shrouds or caskets.