Plum Island Mass.

The Unraveling
Plum Island
October 10, 2013

Strands of the Plum Island story started to unravel in early autumn. On September 30th Newburyport City Councilor Richard O’Sullivan proposed that the Council release details of a closed-door session it had held about the Plum Island water and sewer system.

The water and sewer system was the reason that so many houses had been remodeled into year round dwellings driving the prices of the houses on the primary dune up from $3,000 to close to a million dollars. But the system had lost pressure on several occasions stranding the homeowners without water or sewer services. Several of the water mains were under the streets that had eroded during the winter storms and nobody knew if the system had failed because of the storms, faulty construction, or both.

The city was trying to decide whether to sue Camp Dresser McKee the engineering firm…