BOLTON: “TONG IS WRONG. CONNECTICUT CAN SUE — AND I WILL.”
After 17.5 million gallons of sewage hit the Connecticut River, the Attorney General told a statewide radio audience there was nothing he could do. Bolton names four things he will do instead.
WESTPORT, Conn. — On July 21, an estimated 17.5 million gallons of untreated sewage — human waste and solid trash — went into the Connecticut River from Massachusetts. About 13.5 million gallons of it came from a single plant: Bondi’s Island in Agawam, a few miles above our border.
Within three days, Massachusetts had roughly thirty people in waders raking human waste, tampons and condoms off the beach at a yacht club in Agawam.
Connecticut got nothing. No inspection. No cleanup. No lawsuit.
The river does not stop at the state line. Neither did the sewage.
On July 24, Attorney General William Tong was asked about it on Mornings with Gary Byron on The Talk of Connecticut. He called it “a federal issue.” He said his office had sent a letter. And he said this: “If I could sue Massachusetts tomorrow and make them do something different, I would… don’t you think if I could be a hero, I would have done it already?”
“He’s wrong,” said John I. Bolton, the Republican nominee for Attorney General and a Connecticut trial lawyer for thirty-six years. “He’s wrong about the law, he’s wrong about who you sue, and he’s wrong that his hands are tied. I question his research.”
Bolton pointed to three things.
He named the law that gives him the power. Tong said on the air that “the remedy is under the Clean Water Act.” “He’s right — that is exactly where the remedy is,” Bolton said. “What he apparently doesn’t know is that the Clean Water Act lets a state go into federal court and sue the polluter. It says so in plain English. He named the tool and then told the whole state he doesn’t have any tools.”
He was aiming at the wrong target. “Nobody should be suing the state of Massachusetts. Massachusetts doesn’t own that plant. The Springfield Water and Sewer Commission owns it and runs it,” Bolton said. “You sue the outfit that dumped the sewage. That isn’t fancy lawyering. That’s the first thing you learn.”
He sued the EPA two days earlier. On July 22 — two days before the interview — Tong’s own office announced he had won a federal court order forcing the EPA to act on air pollution. “On Wednesday he beat the EPA in court,” Bolton said. “On Friday he said our river is an EPA problem, so all he can do is send letters. Both of those things cannot be true.”
Tong also suggested the discharges may be regulated in part by the Army Corps of Engineers. They are not. The Army Corps handles dredging and navigation. Sewage is EPA. “That’s not a gotcha,” Bolton said. “That’s a sign nobody in that office has opened the file.”
Bolton also took on Tong’s claim that Connecticut is in no position to complain because “we make discharges too.”
“He’s right about that, and I’ll say it in Hartford just as fast as I’ll say it in Springfield,” Bolton said. “Hartford put roughly 797 million gallons into that river in 2024 — more than Springfield, Holyoke and Chicopee combined. But he uses that as his reason to do nothing. I use it as the reason to hold everybody to the same standard. Our own mess is an argument for enforcing the law everywhere. It is not an argument for enforcing it nowhere.”
Bolton said he will take four actions as Attorney General — and called on Tong to take them now rather than wait.
1. Sue. The Clean Water Act requires sixty days’ written warning before you can file. I will serve that warning on the Springfield Water and Sewer Commission. I have already written it, and I am releasing it publicly so people can see exactly what this office should have filed years ago.
2. Get Connecticut into the Holyoke case. Holyoke’s sewage is already the subject of a federal court case, on a cleanup schedule that runs to 2037. Federal law gives Connecticut the right to join that case. Nobody has ever asked. Our people are being told to wait eleven more years for a deal we had no voice in.
3. Object to the permits. These plants dump under federal permits. Federal law gives downstream states the right to object to those permits and demand a public hearing. Connecticut has never filed a single objection. Not once.
4. Clean our own riverbank. I will direct DEEP to inspect and clean the Connecticut shoreline from the state line south — Suffield, Enfield, Windsor Locks. Massachusetts got a crew to a yacht club in three days. We have not sent one person.
“The Attorney General asked on the radio whether I think he would have been a hero already if he could,” Bolton said. “Being a hero isn’t the job. Obsessively suing the federal government isn’t the job. Reading the file is the job. Filing the paper is the job. For years, the answer for the people who live on that river has been another letter. I’m done with letters.”
MEDIA CONTACT:
Michele May, Email Michele@johnbolton4ag.com