At the March 4th, 2022 Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s (MWRA) Wastewater Advisory Committee meeting, core activists from Save the Alewife Brook learned something awful about Belmont’s sewage.
In 2015, the MWRA reconstructed a Combined Sewer Outfall (CSO) known as MWR003 in the Little River/Alewife Brook. They did this as part of the 2006 Long Term Control Plan that closed the CAM004 CSO. However last year, MWR003 dumped 20 million gallons of sewage pollution into the Little River / Alewife Brook (although their model predicted 1 million for a typical year). The project also cost the MWRA rate payers $3.7 million.
The MWRA tied sewer trunks from Cambridge and Belmont into this CSO to provide “hydraulic relief” for their failing and over-capacitated system downstream. So now, when the MWRA’s Alewife sewage system is inundated with rain, Cambridge’s and Belmont’s sewage gets dumped into the Little River / Alewife Brook.
We think that as part of the original Long Term CSO Control Plan, this “solution” to the CSO problem was not much of a solution at all. The MWRA has basically shifted the problem around and not fixed the systemic problem of their failing sewage system throughout the Alewife.
Here’s a link to Cambridge’s super cool online viewer which you can use to see the sewer lines into the CSO known as MWR003: https://gis.cambridgema.gov/map/Viewer.aspx?state=418621675429
Reminder:
Join us on Tomorrow – Sunday Night! March 13th at 7 PM
Please join us on Sunday March 13th at 7 pm for Save the Alewife Brook’s March Community Meeting!