Cause for alarm, or creating alarm?

I just read this report in the Daily News, explaining in rather alarming terms, why people should not be swimming in the river at the moment.

The river, the report says, is a "murky brown."

"Some (of the color) is simple erosion," said Tracie Sales, the water resource manager for the Merrimack River Watershed Council. "But until someone does an analysis, no one knows."

In its 2007 annual report, the MRWC declared the river's water quality to be as good as it has been in decades, with one exception: after a rainstorm. So swimming in the Merrimack right now is not such a great idea.

"Generally speaking, I wouldn't want to go swimming in the river right after a significant rainstorm," Sales said.

But wait - in the very next paragraph, it says that the state tests the water off Salisbury Beach Reservation weekly and has yet to find any problems. The reservation is directly across the river from Plum Island, but it's not clear if the state is testing the ocean water or the river water. There are state-owned beaches on both bodies of water.

The MWRC tests water in the river only once a month and sends it to a lab.

So what's the big deal?

The sewage treatment plants. I think they call them "wastewater" treatment plants now. A source of pollution in the river, the story says, is combined sewer overflow, which is caused when a treatment plant is so inundated with water from the rain, it is forced to flush out untreated or partially treated water into the river.

We're talking plants from the river's source in New Hampshire right down to here, its mouth.

Wayne Waisanen, a shift operator for the Haverhill Wastewater Treatment plant, explains why he thinks we should NEVER swim in the river:

During dry weather, Waisanen said the treatment plant removes about 97 or 98 percent of the waste.

"That still leaves 2 percent of the waste, and that essentially ends up in the river," he said.

"Then you end up during rain surge events, bacteria taking a trip through the system without getting killed. We try to disinfect to the best of our ability, but it's not 100 percent foolproof."

Well we all knew that some "untreated water" was ending up in the river, right?

But something not mentioned in this story is potential waste dumped from party boats, which a neighbor brought to my attention a few months back.

Sometimes, I bumble into the river to cool off. Well, I have not done so this year, but in the past I have. I can't tell without more research if there is a real problem here.

The river has a pretty strong current, and I would be more comfortable if the DN had quoted someone other than a shift operator in Haverhill (what is a shift operator?), who is saying something contradictory to what someone from the Merrimack River Watershed Council said.

Sales is sticking by the Council's annual report.