Officials from Rockland, a small South Shore town of 10 square miles, say they intend to comply with a new state law to expand zoning for housing in their community. But Town Administrator Doug Lapp says what happens next is unclear.
“We don't really have enough water and sewer capacity to be able to support the kinds of very dense housing that the state is forcing us to allow by right,” said Lapp.
City officials from Newbury, with a population of about 7,000, say they’re also concerned about what happens after they comply with zoning changes — allowing for an additional 154 units of multifamily housing in their North Shore town.
Planning Director Martha Taylor says there is no way the town can afford to build a new public sewer or wastewater treatment plant to accommodate new housing — an expense that would far exceed their $23.4 million fiscal year budget.
The MBTA Communities law requires 177 municipalities to create zoning that expands housing units in dense areas, largely around transit stations. It’s meant to change rules so developers are more likely to create much needed multi-family housing across the state.
But many municipalities, mostly small or medium-sized communities outside of Boston, tell GBH News their concern is more mundane than political: What to do with the sewage?
“Without a place to put your waste, you just can't build anything bigger than what's already there,” said Jim Boudreau, town administrator for Scituate.
Twenty municipalities told state officials in public documents last year that they plan to comply with the law, but all expressed significant concern over the lack of funds or resources to build or expand sewer lines, or connect to other towns, according to public records obtained by the GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting. Officials from over half of them spoke to GBH News discussing lack of capacity, exorbitant costs, or the actual impossibility of creating a public sewer because of a town’s terrain. Some worry the high cost of improving infrastructure will defeat the purpose of creating lower cost housing.
Officials from the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities say there are existing programs to fund sewers and expansions. The agency has provided $6 million in grants to 156 communities to fund planning around MBTA Communities compliance while other funding is being proposed. In 2024, Gov. Maura Healey established a Housing Advisory Council and a Commission to Unlocking Housing production to advise the administration on how to address roadblocks.
“Governor Healey created the HousingWorks Infrastructure Program to help municipalities address their infrastructure challenges,” said spokesman Noah Bombard.
The state provided GBH with a list of recent HousingWorks infrastructure awards. Only one was for a town that complained about sewer infrastructure last year — Upton. The town was awarded $3.6 million to extend water and sewer infrastructure to support a private development with residences for seniors, townhouses and potential new development.
But municipal leaders say this isn’t the kind of funding that puts pipes in the ground and prompts question about the viability of the MBTA Communities law, touted by advocates and legislators on both sides of the aisle as an answer to the state’s housing crisis. Over the last several weeks, the town of Milton has gained attention for rejecting its zoning plan, prompting a lawsuit by the state attorney general.
The 'significant expense' of expanding infrastructure
But in small towns like Littleton, which has only about 10,000 people, officials say they have been working on creating new development for years, including an extensive and expensive sewer expansion.
Littleton is considered a commuter rail community because the Littleton/Route 495 station falls within its borders. The town changed its zoning to comply with the state law requiring an additional 750 housing units.
But Town Planner Maren Toohill says officials are concerned that their sewage system won’t be able to accommodate the extra use. Toohill said the town will receive $5.5 million in grants from MassWorks, a program that provides infrastructure grants to communities. But it’s not enough — the sewer system will cost around $50 million. “It’s at a significant expense,” she said.
Scituate, the South Shore town Boudreau oversees, is in a similar conundrum. The town has already zoned for mixed-use housing projects that pre-date the MBTA zoning law. But Boudreau says the town lacks the infrastructure to make the zoned housing a reality.
Replacing a water pipe costs about $1 million a mile, he says. A MassWorks grant has helped some, but Boudreau said it will cost millions more to come up with a sewage storage system. Beyond the cost, there’s getting local approval in town and select board meetings to create new sewage lines. There’s also moving or working around gas lines and other existing infrastructure already in the ground. Boudreau says he doesn’t think policymakers understand that.
"It's not putting a man on the moon, that's for sure. But where’s [the sewage] going to go?’’ he said. “There's a lot of work to do it. So it takes a long time to get it right,” he said. “The Commonwealth is going to have to step up.”
Many town managers and planners told GBH News that while they appreciate the existence of MassWorks grants, they’re not enough to cover the costs of building a sewer line, expanding sewage capacity, running a sewer pump station and wastewater treatment plant.
Towns like Merrimac have struggled to get grant funding for sewer and treatment plant improvements and are seeking low-interest loans from the state through the State Revolving Fund program, touted by state officials as a solution to accounting problems. That program “offers affordable financing options to city and towns and public water utilities to improve water supply infrastructure,” according to the state’s website.
Merrimac town officials estimate the cost to expand its treatment plant at $25 to $30 million.
Ed Coletta, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, said the state agency works closely with communities to ensure that they have the sewer capacity to support long-term development.
“There are systems in place for cities and towns to access state assistance as communities zone for additional unit capacity,” he said.
But town officials told GBH that while they communicate with MassDEP often and conversations go well, it hasn’t resulted in much funding from the state.
In some areas, like the small town of Newbury, there is no public sewer at all. That hasn’t been much of a problem before because most residents used their own septic systems. Nearby Newburyport allows for limited usage from Newbury municipal buildings to hook up to its treatment plant, or those who have failed septic systems, according to town officials.
Taylor, the planning director there, said Newbury isn’t considering building a public sewer or wastewater plant due to high costs. She’s not sure how the state developed its guidelines for towns. But, she says, it seems like a “sort of bird’s eye view looking down” without “really understanding specific land issues and infrastructure issues.”
In Rockland, Lapp said the town used all of its $3.2 million in federal pandemic relief dollars toward water and sewer. He agrees that building additional housing units is important, but there’s “disconnect” on making that happen.
Beyond paying for sewers and dealing with capacity issues, Lapp says the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection direct towns to make improvements to water treatment and flow, which can also impact sewer plant issues.
“If the state really wants to get serious about facilitating the construction, not just on paper, but the actual construction of lots of new housing, then the state really needs to get more serious about investing a lot more money in infrastructure, so cities and towns can actually help make that happen,” he said.
Mark Racicot is the land use director for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, an organization that assists municipalities with housing production plans. He said more needs to be done to figure out how to address these challenges.
“In some cases, the developers would be putting in small scale package treatment plants,’’ he said. “But in other cases, I suspect that the municipalities will be needing to look for additional funding from the state to build a small-scale sewage treatment system.”
Some town administrators said that the issue begs the question of whether the sentiment of the law, to make it easier to create housing — maybe some that’s affordable — is really being considered.
Any developer that comes into West Bridgewater will have to take on the cost of creating a sewer system connecting to neighboring municipalities, said David Gagne, town administrator of the 7,700 resident town.
“That means that the properties that they build are not going to be 4 or $500,000 properties. They’re gonna have to be 6 or $700,000 properties, or they're going to be more luxury apartments,'' he said, "versus more affordable units because they could have to recoup that expense.”
Creative workarounds
Other officials told GBH News that their guess is that developers will have to deal with the headache of sewers, and foot the cost. But some worry that no developer would take on a project so expensive. If they did, they’d have to jack up the price of future rental units to recoup their costs.
In Boxford, almost every house is served by its own septic system, so there’s no public sewer. The town believes getting that would be the responsibility of the developer.
Ross Povenmire, Boxford's director of land use, said to facilitate the process the town proposed creating the MBTA Community Zoning district next to nearby Haverhill.
“A savvy developer might be able to bring in sewer and water from the city of Haverhill, where it's available,” he said.
Tyngsborough officials say they have a local sewer system but send waste elsewhere for treatment. Town Manager Colin Loiselle says his town sends its waste to Lowell.
“Naturally, the town and ultimately the ratepayers are paying for that volume,’’ he said. “We're always also trying to balance what is our capacity because these end destinations have capacity as well.”
Loiselle said that while the town had concerns about the state’s one-size-fits-all solution, it’s working on ways to really make housing happen. He said the town just had a 100 unit, 55-plus development built in a part of town that didn’t have a public sewer.
“The developer made a calculation that it was cheaper for them to pay to extend sewer to their site than it was to construct a treatment facility,’’ he said. “So we've seen these creative, public, private workarounds.”
In other situations, having a sewer line isn’t just a question of cost, it’s just a flat out impossibility. The Wachusett Mountain rises above the middle of Princeton, with bedrock making up much of the soil in the 3,500 resident community.
John Mirick, chair of the planning board there, said there’s no possible way to put a public sewer in Princeton. The town is only required to zone for 69 units, which Mirick thinks is a feasible number for the town to provide services including light, fire, health and education. But Mirick says the problem is the expectation in the law that the town would have to build 15-residential units per acre. It’s just not plausible, he said.
“There was an air of disbelief of many residents that somebody in Boston would even think that there was any way for Princeton to have high density zoning without a sewer system, and without town water,” he said.
