Join LSPA and the Newbury Conservation Commission (NCC) for Two Upcoming Meetings Regarding the Mount Sunapee Parking Lot Expansion and the Wastewater Lagoons

Learn more about the issues regarding the Mount Sunapee Parking Lot Expansion and Wastewater Treatment Lagoons on our webpage.

Concerns Remain About the Mt. Sunapee Parking Lot Expansion and Wastewater Treatment Lagoons

LSPA and The Newbury Conservation Commission (NCC) remain extremely concerned about the water quality impacts of the outdated and poorly functioning wastewater treatment system in use at the Mt. Sunapee Resort since 1972. The system stores effluent from septic tanks in a series of unlined lagoons. It uses a spray irrigation system to spray effluent into three vegetated fields, but some of the spray goes into natural wetlands. Because the lagoons are unlined, they leak an unknown amount of effluent into groundwater and into Beck Brook, which flows into Lake Sunapee at the State Beach. It is the oldest version of this type of system currently in use in New Hampshire, and several similar facilities in the state have been denied Department of Environmental Services (DES) permits. Yet a Groundwater Discharge Permit has been granted for Mt. Sunapee Resort’s facility despite the fact that it has regularly exceeded the required water quality standards in the permit for Total Suspended Solids (TSS) on over 48 occasions (62% of samples from 2018 – 2024) and has exceeded the Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) standard at least 15 times (approximately 20% of samples from 2018 – 2024). Data from these monitoring well reports are publicly available on DES’s OneStop system.