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MASSACHUSETTS WATER RESOURCES AUTHORITY 



Charlestown Navy Yard 



100 First Avenue 



Boston, Massachusetts- 02 129 



Telephone: (61 7) 242-6000 

 Facsimile: (617) 241-6070 



TESTIMONY OF DOUGLAS B. MACDONALD BEFORE THE MERCHANT 



MARINE AND FISHERIES COMMITTEE OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF 



REPRESENTATIVES 



BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 



OCTOBER 18, 1993 



Congressman Studds, Ladies and Gentlemen: 



My name is Douglas B. MacDonald and I am the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Water 

 Resources Authority. As you know, the MWRA was created to rebuild the region's crumbling 

 water and sewer infrastructure and to implement the long-delayed plan to restore water quality in 

 Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay. As such, we have welcomed the U.S. EPA's recent 

 biological assessment and the National Marine Fisheries Services' Biological Opinion essentially 

 confirming the compliance of the planned secondary treatment facilities and the Massachusetts Bay 

 outfall tunnel with the legal requirements of the Endangered Species Act 



About 19 months ago, I took over as Executive Director of the MWRA. During my second week . 

 on the job, I travelled to Cape Cod to confront what was then, and remains, a top priority issue for 

 the Authority. For months prior to that, the agency had been at odds with interest groups on the 

 Cape and elsewhere about the potential impacts of the outfall tunnel on Massachusetts and Cape 

 Cod bays. We promised to listen and asked that we be listened to in retum. We have tried to take 

 all the concerns seriously, and to address them honestly. Obviously, all the questions will never 

 be answered, but the overwhelming weight of evidence suggests that no threat to the Mass. Bay 

 marine ecosystem is presented by the outfall. 



In Boston Harbor, we are already witnessing how a fragile estuary can come back to life when we 

 implement pollution prevention measures. The cessation of sludge discharges to the harbor in 

 December of 1991 , when the MWRA's new sludge-to-fertilizer plant opened, has resulted in 

 significant cleaner water in the harbor. Improvements to MWRA and local sewer systems, and 

 dramatic reductions in toxics discharged by industries, have yielded healthier flounder, lobsters 

 and other marine life as previously "dead" areas of the harbor bottom now provide habitat for the 

 bottom of the food chain. Harbor beaches have been open for swimming more frequently this past 

 summer than at any time in the past 50 years. 



While we can all be proud of these recent achievements, by far the most dramatic improvements are 

 yet to come, with the completion of the new treatment facilities, and the relocation of the effluent 

 discharge out of the shallow waters of the harbor, where their impacts are so negative, both to the 

 harbor and the bay. It is for this last reason that clearing the hurdles of the Endangered Species Act 

 lawsuit, the Biological Assessment and the Biological Opinion are so important. 



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