The town has sent out a notification on Monday, September 8 to suggest people avoid King’s Beach for 48 hours following combined sewer overflows due to heavy rain.
Swampscott received almost an inch of rain on Saturday, September 6, according to the RainDrop App. According to the town alert, the heavy rainfall led to a combined sewer overflow into the surface waters of King’s Beach.
“The overflow consisted, or likely consisted, of untreated or partially treated sewage and waste,” the alert reads.
King’s Beach has been the center of pollution discussions for nearly a century. Stacey’s Brook, which flows into the beach, was converted into a combined sewer and stormwater system serving both Lynn and Swampscott.
The Swampscott-Lynn beach has not always been the safest, having received the lowest rank among 15 beaches inspected in the Save the Harbor/Save the Bay’s 2024 water quality report card. In 2023, King’s Beach failed nearly half of its water quality tests, according to data on the City of Lynn’s website.
The Lynn Water and Sewer Commission separated the sewer and stormwater systems about 25 years ago, but there is the potential issue that not all pipes are fully separated and additional leaks continue. Swampscott lined about half of its pipes two years ago and has begun to treat the remaining areas, but the contamination has not gone away. Untreated water and land-based bacteria from fertilizers still are the two major contributors to the pollution.
Swampscott and Lynn installed an ultraviolet (UV) pilot program this past summer to kill bacteria in stormwater before it reaches the ocean, aiming to create a cleaner beach for residents.
The program wrapped up the week of August 18, as the equipment was dismantled.
While the results are still being analyzed, since June 20, water treated through the UV system has consistently tested at or below 10 colony-forming units per 100 milliliters (cfu/100 ml), except on June 28, July 24, and July 26. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health specifies that safe waters have at or under 104 bacterial organisms cfu/100 ml.
Meanwhile, untreated water flowing from the Stacey’s Brook culverts in Lynn and Swampscott have often been above 104 cfu. The majority of the Massachusetts Department of Health’s weekly testing has shown the water quality as acceptable throughout the summer.
Engineering consultant Kleinfelder is analyzing the data this month, and follow-up meetings will be held to discuss the findings. Lynn Communications and Strategic Initiatives Manager Valerie Vong previously told the Swampscott Tides that the analysis will help inform another potential program in 2026.
This, however, is to the displeasure of some of the neighbors around King’s Beach, who issued a legal notice over noise from the Swampscott-Lynn UV treatment project.
Some residents commissioned a noise study from engineering firm J. & A. Enterprises, which specializes in noise and vibration analysis. The study, which was released on July 24 and later obtained by the Swampscott Tides, measured the area the night prior, on July 23 between 11:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m.
Ambient noise levels were measured at 44.9 dB, largely attributed to wave lapping sounds during high tide. Noise from the UV project, measured on the sidewalk in front of homes across from the plant, ranged from 61 to 65 dB. J. & A. Enterprises called this “far in excess of the allowance of 10 dB above” the ambient noise permitted by the Department of Environmental Protections, equating the noise at the residences to “that of a busy industrial site.”
