U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren visits the Buzzards Bay Coalition
We were honored to welcome U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren to the Coalition’s downtown New Bedford headquarters last Friday. During the senator’s afternoon visit, she got a chance to speak with several staff and volunteers to learn more about the Coalition’s work.
Senator Elizabeth Warren visited the Buzzards Bay Coalition’s headquarters in downtown New Bedford.
In a meeting with Coalition staff and representatives from the city of New Bedford, Sen. Warren lent her voice to our effort to keep Buzzards Bay safe from oil spills. The Coalition has been fighting for years to maintain the strongest possible protections against oil spills in the Bay. But the federal government keeps trying to weaken the regulations that have kept the Bay safe from another major oil spill since Bouchard B-120 in 2003.
We also spoke to Sen. Warren about federal funding to expand wastewater infrastructure around Buzzards Bay. The vast majority of homes on southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod are tied to septic systems, which is the largest source of nitrogen pollution to our coastal waters. Expanding public sewer lines would significantly reduce this pollution, but it’s expensive. Local communities across the region need federal funding for wastewater infrastructure.
The Coalition agreed with the senator that communities must work together and plan as a region to be most efficient. This is beginning to happen on Cape Cod, where a regional wastewater management plan is being updated for the first time in over 35 years.