Massive sewage leak forces swimmers out of the north shore beaches ahead of heat wave

EDGARTOWN, Mass. — Just as New England heats up this week, swimmers hoping to cool off at some north shore beaches, like Salisbury and Plum Island, are being told to stay out of the water.

“It’s a bummer, especially for the people vacationing here,” Allyson Erickson said at Salisbury Beach.

It’s because a massive sewer pipe break in Haverhill on Friday continues dumping millions of gallons of sewage into the Merrimack River.

With triple digit temperatures ahead this week, beach goers are calling it “bad timing.”

“It doesn’t look a certain type of way but if I know there’s a sewage leak, I don’t want to be in there,” Qasim Qasim said. “I think they need to figure it out because I’d like to enjoy the water a little bit.”

At the site of the break in Haverhill, officials said heavy rains triggered two massive breaks in the critical 42-inch wastewater pipeline, dumping about eight million gallons of sewage into local waterways.

Crews are working to install a bypass line to stop the discharge, but officials say the damage is much larger than they originally thought.

“Hopefully it’s not a complete failure of the whole pipe and we can address what’s wrong, but we need to clear the pipe, fix the problem we have right now so we can take an assessment of what we have,” said Haverhill Mayor, Melinda Barrett.

“We initially had a timeline of Friday by having the bypass set up but we kind of scaled things back. Right now, we’re hoping to have it done by Wednesday,” said Bob Ward from the Haverhill Department of Public Works.

Officials say 2,000 feet of bypass pipe was delivered to the site Monday, with more expected as construction continues.

Crews will be working around the clock, and beach goers hope things will be back to normal before record temps hit the Boston area.

“It’s the middle of summer. The dog days and the fourth of July coming up this weekend, let’s hope they can get that figure out pretty soon,” Russell Nickey said.

The Haverhill Mayor assures that that city’s drinking water system is completely separate and remains safe to drink.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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