Section 16C. No variance approved by the department of environmental protection may authorize a discharge into an estuary or coastal embayment or a discharge which will have a significant adverse effect upon an estuary, a coastal embayment, or land subject to tidal action. Any variance approved by the department of environmental protection shall require the applicant to eliminate all discharges into estuaries and coastal embayments from publicly owned treatment works under control of the applicant. Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit discharges within estuaries or coastal embayments from facilities designed to abate existing discharges exclusively from combined sewer overflows, where such facilities have been approved by the division of water pollution control, and where such existing discharges from combined sewer overflows degrade or threaten to degrade the designated ocean sanctuary nor is anything in this Act intended to alter the effect of the previous exemptions found at chapter one hundred and twenty of the acts of nineteen hundred and eighty-one and chapter three hundred and sixty-nine of the acts of nineteen hundred and eighty-four.
The seaward boundary of the Plymouth - Kingston Duxbury coastal embayment shall be a line between Gurnet Point and Rocky Point, provided, however, that no discharge may be authorized in a depth of water which at mean low tide is less than thirty feet.
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