There are lots of different ways the cities and towns across Massachusetts have been ranked: oldest towns, friendliest towns, most dangerous cities and towns, there are rankings for them all. A new finding from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection , however, might be the grossest ranking for cities we've heard of yet. Turns out sewer overflows were extremely high this year.
In fact, from April through September there were three times as many overflows as the same time period in Well this year's heavy rain has a lot to do with it.
Though sewer systems and storm water runoff systems are different, when the rainfall gets very heavy like it did again and again in the pipes can get overwhelmed and extra sewage overflows into the same bodies of water that the storm water flows into.
Older systems, like the ones in New Bedford and Fall River, tend to get overwhelmed more than newer systems, and that resulted in our two biggest SouthCoast cities landing at the top of one disgusting ranking:.
While up in Boston two of the cities facilities saw sewer overflows 18 times in the six months period listed above, Fall River had one site overflow into the Taunton River 76 times.
