for a Safe, Beautiful, Fishable
Alewife Brook for Residents and Wildlife
Save the Alewife Brook (StAB) is working hard for dramatic improvements in and around the Alewife Brook. Planning will be starting soon for what may be a huge investment to clean up the brook and make environmental improvements!
The great cities of Cambridge and Somerville and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority have prepared “Draft Scopes” for their combined sewer overflow (CSO) improvement plans. These draft scopes lay out how they plan to create a new joint Long Term Control Plan to control or eliminate sewage pollution in the Alewife Brook and other waterways.
We reviewed their CSO Draft Scopes and were alarmed by several things:
- Climate Change projections were not included in the plans.
- A regional approach was missing, which meant that there was no overall plan to include system-wide solutions to the problems, or to involve other communities.
- Creative funding alternatives were not mentioned.
Because of these omissions, Save the Alewife Brook presented our own Alewife Brook CSO Plan Draft Scope to the Environmental Protection Agency and to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection on April 28th, 2022.
You can download a copy of our Alewife CSO Control Plan Draft Scope: The Path to Zero Sewage Pollution for a Safe, Beautiful, Fishable Alewife Brook for Residents and Wildlife.
The Save the Alewife Brook Path to Zero Sewage Pollution includes:
- An overview of the sewage pollution problem and how it impacts area residents
- A description of the Alewife’s CSO History from the 1800s to its present systemic failures
- A call for CSO Elimination Planning and Performance Models that include climate change projections, and for improved water quality, green infrastructure, and flood mitigation
- Details of Alewife CSO impacts on Environmental Justice Populations
- Proposed schedule and public participation
- Creative funding options
We welcome your involvement as we work to create a clean, attractive and healthy Alewife Brook. Soon we will be announcing public participation opportunities in the new Alewife plan.