Your View

Your View is YourArlington's only blog. It is the site's place for opinion. To publish here, you must use your full name in most cases.

Font size: + –

3 minutes reading time (644 words)

Alewife Brook sewage campaign: Dredgery, Globe notices

Environment

Kristin Anderson

Thursday, 11 August 2022

1578 Hits

Caption: Worst Offender: Somerville’s SOM01A Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Worst Offender: Somerville’s SOM01A combined sewer overflow.

UPDATED Aug. 11: Precinct 13 Town Meeting member Kristin Anderson, who is monitoring the combined sewer overflows into the Alewife Brook, provided this update via her blog, Save the Alewife Brook.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s mention of dredging the Alewife Brook in its response to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s April 2022 draft scope for the new CSO control plan has revived the discussion about the role removing sediment from the Alewife Brook can play in restoration and flood prevention efforts.

Boston Globe takes note in kayak piece >>

The EPA recommends MWRA include dredging the Alewife Brook as part of the alternatives analysis for the new Control Plan.

July 9 2022. On the Alewife, Kristin Anderson of Save the Alewife Brook sets out to measure sediment depth. On the Alewife July 9, Kristin Anderson sets out to measure sediment depth.

Elimination of combined sewer overflows and sewage pollution in the brook must be achieved through continued sewer separation in Cambridge and Somerville.

But sewer separation means removing stormwater from the sanitary sewer system. Once it’s removed, that stormwater has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is the Alewife Brook.

Increasing the amount of stormwater flowing to the Alewife Brook could increase the threat of area flooding. Therefore, flood mitigation measures must be taken alongside sewer separation.

The EPA suggests that one way to accommodate an increase in stormwater would be to increase the Alewife Brook’s storage and flow capacity by dredging the channelized portion of the brook.

Time dredge brook to increase capacity, prevent flooding

In its response letter, the EPA quotes a 2005 U.S. Geological Survey study that estimated sediment volume in the Alewife Brook at approximately half a million cubic feet. In 1988, one of many moments when the idea of dredging the Alewife was floated, the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC – precursor of both MWRA and the Department of Conservation & Recreation) commissioned a study to determine what was in the sediment. This was necessary to determine how to dispose of the dredged material. When testing indicated that the material was toxic enough to require disposal at a Certified Waste Disposal Site, the MDC’s enthusiasm for dredging faded. If EPA are now endorsing consideration of dredging, then it may be an idea whose time has finally come.

Our Measurements Suggest a Doubling of Sediment Since 1988

Save the Alewife Brook's David White and David Stoff reel in the Alewife's "catch-o-the-day": a microwave oven.

On a fine summer day in July, three members of Save the Alewife Brook set out to measure the depth of sediment at the 1988 testing sites. Equipped with a precision hand-crafted measuring tool – a 5-foot steel rod with a ruled scale ground onto it – and a hand-built canoe. We dropped the boat in at John Wald Park in Cambridge.

It’s no surprise that the amount of sediment has increased since 1988, given three decades of sewage discharges, and infrequent removal of branches and trash. At the center of the Little River opposite MWRA’s CSO MWR003 (‘CCSO’ on the map), our tester measured a sediment depth of approximately 36 inches. That’s double the 18 inches recorded in 1988. Further upstream, adjacent to 20 Acorn Drive (‘AB03’), the sediment measurement was 48 inches. That’s an increase of 18 inches over the 1988 measurement.

Now is the time to consider dredging the Alewife Brook. Removing the sediment could provide immediate benefits in terms of capacity, flow, and improved water quality. Federal Infrastructure Law funds can get this done.

References:

EPA’s May 11 2022 Response to MWRA’s Draft Scope of Work

MWRA Updated CSO Control Plan – Draft Scope of Work and Schedule 04/01/2022

2005 USGS Sediment Study of Rivers and Lakes

1988 Little River / Alewife Brook Sediment Survey

READ MORE ON OUR BLOG >>

February through June: Alewife Brook sewage campaign updates

This viewpoint, from Save the Alewife, was published Monday, Aug. 1, 2022, and updated Aug. 11.

Tags:

Comments

No comments made yet. Be the first to submit a comment

Support our fund-raiser

An informed Arlington
keeps democracy alive

YourArlington is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Your contributions are tax-deductible.

Login Form

YOUR VIEW: Opinions: Roe, Alewife, racism, film, Ukraine, letters, poetry

No. 127: Red Letter Poems 3.0: Performer, audience

Poetry

UPDATED Sept. 9: Steven Ratiner, Arlington’s poet laureate, sought submissions in February 2020 from Arlington residents to contribute to "a rather unconventional, utterly delightful way to inject poetry into the everyday." It was to remain secret until its debut during April’s National Poetry Month. Then the coronavirus hit. In June 2021, he offers Red Letters 3.0.

PUBLISHED: I was asked to write an essay for Askold Melnyczuk’s Arrowsmith Journal about what I learned from the first year of the Red Letter Project. It also became a meditation about the relationship between poet and reader. If you’d like to take a look, here is a link – arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices -- and you’ll also be able to check out the variety of marvelous literary projects that appear under Askold’s Arrowsmith imprint. Enjoy!

Steven Ratiner / David Andrews photo

The Red Letter Poem Project

The Red Letters 3.0: A New Beginning (Perhaps)

At the outset of the Covid pandemic, when fear was at its highest, the Red Letter Project was intended to remind us of community: that, even isolated in our separate homes, we could still face this challenge together. As Arlington’s Poet Laureate, I began sending out a poem of comfort each Friday, featuring the fine talents from our town and its neighbors. Because I enlisted the partnership of seven local arts and community organizations, distribution of the poems spread quickly – and, with subscribers sharing and re-posting the installments, soon we had readers, not only throughout the Commonwealth, but across the country. And I delighted in the weekly e-mails I’d receive with praise for the poets; as one reader recently commented: “You give me the gift of a quiet, contemplative break—with something to take away and reflect on.”

Then our circumstance changed dramatically again: following the murder of George Floyd, the massive social and political unrest, and the national economic catastrophe, the distress of the pandemic was magnified. Red Letter 2.0 announced that I would seek out as diverse a set of voices as I could find – from Massachusetts and beyond – so that their poems might inspire, challenge, deepen the conversation we were, by necessity, engaged in.

Now, with widespread vaccination, an economic rebound, and a shift in the political landscape, I intend to help this forum continue to evolve – Red Letter 3.0. For the last 15 months, I’ve heard one question again and again: when will we get back our old lives? It may pain us to admit it, but that is little more than a fantasy. Our lives have been altered irrevocably – not only our understanding of how thoroughly interdependent we are, both locally and globally, but how fragile and utterly precious is all that we love. Weren’t you bowled over recently by how good it felt just to hug a friend or family member? Or to walk unmasked through a grocery, noticing all the faces?

Letters: Emailing Advocate & Star? Copy it here; it'll be published first

Letters to the editor Letters to the editor

YourArlington's policy about letters to the editor

UPDATED Aug. 13: YourArlington welcomes opinions of all kinds from local residents, including national issues so long as you can draw a local connection. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in June on Roe v Wade must have echoes here, too. Letters are reviewed for fairness, factualness and taste.

letters

This site welcomes letters about any issue that stirs the public mind. Longer opinion pieces are also welcome.

NOTE: When emailing a letter to The Advocate & Star, consider copying YourArlington at the same time. Your opinions will be published sooner.

Please support your view with facts and arguments that attempt to adhere to reason.

You may write on any subject, so long as you try to make a connection to Arlington. If you can't do that, then your residence in town will be a sufficient connection.