Plumbers in Revere, MA

The sewer consent decree and your house connection

In 2010 Revere settled a Clean Water Act case brought by the EPA, the Department of Justice and MassDEP. The consent decree, entered in November 2010, requires the city to find and remove illicit connections and cross connections between the sanitary sewer and the storm drain system and to carry out wastewater and stormwater management plans; Revere also paid a $130,000 penalty. EPA expected the work to end more than 100 basement backups a year.

The job has run long. The original deadline was December 31, 2022. A proposed First Modification, lodged in October 2023, would require an updated wastewater and stormwater plan by December 31, 2026 and extend the deadline for finishing all the work to December 31, 2038.

For property owners, the city's own rules are what count. Roof downspouts, exterior foundation drains and areaway drains may not be connected to the sewer, and each property is required to have its own separate sewer service. If your downspouts empty into the house drain, or your building shares a sewer pipe with the house next door, a plumber can quote rerouting or separating them.

The city is also pulling clean water out of the sewer street by street. Its Inflow Contract 11 project redirects sump pumps, roof drains and leaders, and driveway and yard drains away from the sanitary sewer on Beckert Avenue, Broadway, Gage Avenue, Mountain Avenue and Pearl Avenue, with about 985 feet of new drain pipe and 27 private-property connections to reroute. Construction began in July 2025 and was scheduled to finish in June or July 2026; the City Engineer's office (781-286-8152) handles questions. Residents can also sign up for email or text alerts about sanitary sewer overflows.

Coastal flooding from Beachmont to Point of Pines

About 45% of Revere's land lies in FEMA flood risk zones, according to the city's 2025 Housing Production Plan, and North Revere, Point of Pines, Oak Island and Revere Beach all sit near wetland resource areas. The city's flood resilience checklist counts 598 repetitive-loss structures and more than $8 million in National Flood Insurance Program damages between 1978 and 2021.

Where the water comes from depends on the neighborhood. A 2021 engineering memo prepared for the city found that Point of Pines floods mainly from the ocean side, while Mills Avenue, Gibson Park and the southern stretch of Route 1A flood from the Pines River; some tidal outfalls are underwater at high tide and some are crushed. In Beachmont, Pearl Avenue floods more often where it dips toward Winthrop Parkway, and WBUR reported that in the January 2018 nor'easter one resident's basement filled to chest height.

Because of that exposure, new construction and substantial improvements must file the city's Flood Resiliency Checklist with the building permit, and state building code section R322.1.6 requires plumbing, electrical and mechanical equipment in the floodplain to sit at or above the required flood elevation. To see which flood zone a property is in, use the FEMA flood zone layer on Revere's GIS site, gis.revere.org. If you are replacing a water heater or boiler in a flood zone, ask the Building Division whether the new unit has to go higher, and ask your plumber about a backwater valve so a surge cannot push sewage into the basement. Revere became a state Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness community on October 1, 2019, with a flood study planned for Point of Pines and Riverside.

Two-families, older homes and new high-rises

Compared with its older neighbors to the west, Revere's housing skews newer: the midpoint year built is 1965, only about 26% of units predate 1940, and about 12% have been finished since 2010. Units are split fairly evenly between two-family houses (about 24%), detached single-family homes (25%) and 50-plus-unit buildings (20%). The city's Housing Production Plan counts 64% of homes as multifamily and 56% as renter-occupied.

Much of the recent growth is in large buildings. The count of homes in 50-plus-unit buildings rose 66% from 2010 to 2021, including the apartments around Waterfront Square at Revere Beach, and the January 2025 plan counted about 3,000 more units planned or under construction, many at Suffolk Downs. Renters should go to the landlord or management company first when something leaks or backs up; in a big building the risers and main drains are usually theirs to deal with.

Lead service lines and the city's inventory map

Revere publishes a lead service line inventory, required under EPA's revised Lead and Copper Rule, with an interactive map; where a line's material isn't on record, the city uses predictive modeling to estimate it. In September 2024 EPA also picked Revere for its Get the Lead Out partnership.

The city's lead water safety notice, which carries no date, splits ownership at the shut-off valve: the city's part runs from the water main to that valve, and the homeowner's part continues from the valve to the meter. It says the city currently covers the cost of replacing the private portion as well, but may require owners to pay in future, with a financial assistance program. For lead questions, the notice lists Anthony Gulizia at 781-808-6444; for what a plumber checks on the private side, read the Boston-area lead pipe guide.