Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant and digester domes peeking out from behind the clouds. Shot from a plane out of Logan, Thanksgiving 2025. Photo credit: Kristin Anderson
In the 1990s, households and businesses in Greater Boston paid for the Boston Harbor cleanup with sewer rate increases that enabled borrowing. Now those old long-term loans are finally being paid off, freeing up room in the MWRA’s budget so new projects can be financed without another shock to water and sewer rates.
Between 2024 and 2031, MWRA will finish paying off about $2.1 billion in long-term bonds.1 Because this old debt is coming off the books, MWRA can issue around $2.1 billion in new bonds without raising water and sewer rates for households and businesses. This is happening just in time to fund sewage pollution elimination projects for Alewife Brook and the Charles and Mystic rivers.
While it may appear less expensive to dump untreated waste into our waters, this is only so if the analysis excludes health impacts,2 damage to the environment, and the burden on the wider community. But MWRA is under regulatory and legal obligations. So financing the new sewage elimination plan, aka: the long term Combined Sewer Overflow control plan, is not optional. It is required.
MWRA can clean up the sewage in the Alewife, Mystic, and Charles — and do it without raising rates.
Wondering why the question mark?
Read our recent letters to the MWRA Board of Directors to find out:
November 2025 Letter to MWRA Board regarding the updated sewage elimination plan.
December 2025 Letter to MWRA Board regarding financing of the sewage elimination plan.
Footnotes:
- MWRA Annual Report November 2024, Secured Bond Debt Service chart, page 2: https://emma.msrb.org/P11811316-P11388424-P11828155.pdf ↩︎
- Association between Combined Sewer Overflow Events and Gastrointestinal Illness in Massachusetts Municipalities with and without River-Sourced Drinking Water, 2014–2019
https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2024/sewage-overflows-linked-to-increase-in-gastrointestinal-illnesses/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11110654/
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