Hartford’s original sewer system is 150 years old.

No wonder we face sewage back-ups and major water pollution. Every time it rains in the Greater Hartford area, there are reminders that the MDC District’s aging sewer system – including the core of the system in Hartford – is unable to handle our 21st century development and population.

Why? First, the original Hartford system was designed to support about 15,000 people. Today the expanded system, including the District’s central Hartford Treatment Plant, serves 400,000 people in 6 towns.

Second, the Hartford core system uses “combined sewers” in which a single pipe carries off both sewage and storm water. These sewers are especially vulnerable during storms, because storm water pours into the sewage pipes and adds dramatically to the wastewater volume. It fills the pipes beyond their capacity.

In addition, many of these old pipes are too small, and many are cracked – allowing even more storm water to inundate the sewers. Homeowner drainage also burdens the system with flows from roof drains or leaders, basement sump pumps, and yard drains.

The result? Over-full sewers send extra-large flow volumes to the treatment plant. These sewage flows exceed the facility’s treatment capacity, and cause basement backups, street flooding, and discharges of raw sewage to local streams and the Connecticut River. These problems happen more than 50 times per year.

Over 1 billion gallons of untreated Sewage overflows every year in Greater Hartford
But the MDC has a solution – The Clean Water Project

The MDC District recently reached a Consent Decree with the U.S. Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency to eliminate illegal discharges from our sewers within 12 years.