“City gets $20M for sewer plant,” headline, the Newburyport Daily News, January 8, 2007.

Sounds like really, really good news to me.

A while back there was an excellent story in the Newburyport Current by Ulrika Gerth, December 22, 2006 on the unbelievably bad condition that the Newburyport Sewer Plant is currently in.

A former city councilor told me that the sewer plant was “held together with duck-tape.” I think that’s pretty close to an exact quote. Another words things are in really, really bad shape.

In that article in the Newburyport Current, hard working Public Services Director Brendan O’Regan “said he would apply to the state for a low-interest loan and lobby state and federal delegations for contributions.” And low and behold Brendan O’Regan was successful. Good go’n.

It sounds like from the article in the Newburyport Daily News that discussions with the mayor and the Newburyport City Council are “at the infancy of debate on this issue.”

Mr. O’Regan goes onto say, “The good news is, that if we do decide to go forward with some kind or repairs, it will be a lot cheaper than it would have been without the low-interest loans. We’re talking about millions of dollars in savings.”

Can we not go forward with repairs? Yikes. We’re talking the basics here, air (the Landfill) and water.

Not a terribly “yummy” subject, but one that is real important. And it sure sounds to me that the city’s sewer treatment plant is verging on archaic in the year 2007.

Mary Eaton
Newburyport