The Board of Water and Sewer Commissioners announced Tuesday night that the Environmental Protection Agency issued a draft administrative order to Bristol’s Public Works Department and the Water and Sewer Board of Commissioners regarding the city’s storm water system.
A meeting to discuss the draft order will be held with the EPA on Wednesday, Aug. 19, Sean Hennessey, director of sewer, said. He explained that three sanitary sewer evaluations need to be performed at sites on Gridley Street and the South Mountain and Forestville neighborhoods before Jan. 31, 2028.
“There are many elements to it, but I think at the end of the day, EPA is just looking for illicit discharges into the storm line system,” Henessey said.
Henessey anticipated that the cost of the studies will be expensive.
He also said that the order came to fruition after an EPA employee was in the city unannounced in April 2025 and “basically sniffed around three or four catch basins that were not maintained by public works, and they detected sewer.”
This discovery is what Hennessey said prompted EPA the sampling of 13 different sites in the city in May 2025, with two showing elevated levels of E coli. He said that one of the sites that was sampled with E coli was the result of an RV that was illegally piped into the catch basin.
Robert Longo, the superintendent of the Water and Sewer Department, said that the city has already proven that the camper illegally dug their yard and was connected to a storm drain.
“Whatever they were doing in the vehicle was going into [the drain], and the EPA went and sampled it and made it look like our sewer system had failed,” Longo said. “So, the investigation is actually beneficial for our infrastructure, etcetera. We probably needed to do one for a while in some different little areas anyways.”
Longo said that the town is going to comply with the draft order and hire an engineer to assist with the study.
“We were a small portion of this and what the requirements are,” Longo said.
In other business, Longo said that he received notice Monday of a national fluoride shortage. He said that the city has almost a year’s supply of fluoride left but doesn’t know how long the shortage will last.
Longo said that the Department of Public Health said that fluoride dosage rates in the water can be reduced by almost half. He questioned whether decreasing fluoride dosages will result in a violation from DPH, and said the regulatory agency said they will get back to him after they hold a meeting.
“Don’t set us up to fail,” Longo said.