Crews at beach clean up plastic disks from wastewater treatment plant
Work crews on Monday spread out along Seacoast beaches to remove thousands of potentially harmful white plastic disks that washed ashore over the weekend after being accidently released from the Hooksett Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The disks, which are used to soak up and consume bacteria in wastewater, have led Seabrook officials to temporarily close Seabrook Beach.
N.H. Department of Environmental Services officials said Monday preliminary results of the most recent sampling of disks found on New Hampshire and Massachusetts beaches indicate no contamination with E. coli bacteria.
However, DES spokesman Jim Martin said the N.H. Division of Public Health Services is advising the public to treat the disks as though they may contain harmful bacteria and not to handle them without protective plastic gloves.
Results by DES over the weekend showed that some of the disks did contain E. coli, which if ingested, can cause serious illness, especially for infants and individuals with weakened immune systems.
“There are a lot of these disks, and the cleanup effort is going to be a big one,” said Martin, who estimates that hundreds of thousands of the disks were released.
The disks are small, white, mesh circles approximately two inches in diameter.
Martin said the Hooksett treatment facility experienced a malfunction Sunday, March 6, which caused the plastic disks to be released accidently into the Merrimack River.
“The plant was receiving high volumes from the recent rain event and they had a malfunction of one of their screens,” Martin said. “The tank overflowed, and (its contents) made it into a small tributary that goes into the Merrimack River.”
Martin said the state’s administrative investigation is still under way, but he made it clear the town of Hooksett is responsible for costs associated with the cleanup efforts.
The disks started washing ashore Thursday at Seabrook Beach. Over the weekend, disks started popping up at Plaice Cove, North Beach and Hampton Beach.
Beach-goers in Massachusetts, including those in Salisbury and at Plum Island, also reported seeing the disks, leading officials to close those beaches.
Hampton Town Manager Fred Welch said on Monday members of the Strafford County Correctional Community Service Group have volunteered to aid the town in removing the disks from the beaches.
DES and the Blue Ocean Society are coordinating a volunteer effort on Wednesday from noon until 5 p.m. to remove the disks from North Hampton Beach and Seabrook Beach.
“We are planning by tomorrow night to have most of it cleaned up,” Welch said. “How many are still in the ocean, we have no way of knowing. There is no count on how many got loose. We understand there could be something in the order of 10 million that were in the tanks that overflowed. How many got out is the question.”
All the disks collected so far, he said, have been bagged and taken to the town’s transfer station, where they will be buried in a landfill per order of the state.
Officials are keeping a tally on how much it costs the town to remove all the disks, Welch said.
“We have already received written authorization to report any of the costs to the town of Hooksett,” he added.
The issue of whether the disks might be contaminated was of immediate concern to Seabrook officials Friday, and several of the objects were collected at the beach and taken to Seabrook’s Wastewater Treatment Plant to be cultured over the weekend.
Seabrook Town Manager Barry Brenner said Monday that as a precaution, Seabrook Beach has been temporarily closed.
“We have been in contact with the state Department of Environmental Services concerning the need for the state and the town of Hooksett to clean up the beach,” Brenner said.
Martin said coordinated clean-up efforts are being organized.
Nancy Rineman contributed to this report.Beach cleanup Who: The state Department of Environmental Services and the Blue Ocean Society are hosting a volunteer effort to remove disks from Hampton and Seabrook beaches. When: Noon-5 p.m. Wednesday, March 16 Details: Visit www.des.nh.gov or www.blueoceansociety.org. To report seeing these disks, call Jim Martin, DES public information officer, at 271-3710.