Overview
- Two breaks in a 42‑inch force main at Haverhill’s South Mill Street pump station failed during Friday night’s heavy rain and created an active sanitary sewer overflow.
- City officials estimate about 8–10 million gallons of untreated wastewater are entering the Merrimack River each day while crews build a temporary bypass to restore flow to the treatment plant.
- Multiple North Shore beaches and shellfish areas in Newburyport, Ipswich and Salisbury are closed until state and local testing finds bacteria levels safe for swimming and harvesting, and officials say drinking water is not affected.
- Emergency contractors are working 24 hours a day and have staged roughly 2,000 feet of bypass pipe on site with a temporary fix hoped for later this week; the bypass is expected to cost $2–3 million and full repairs could top $10 million.
- The breaks expose vulnerabilities in 1970s sewer infrastructure and threaten summer tourism and shellfishing livelihoods unless flows are diverted, repairs finish, and water‑quality tests improve.