The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection issued a new Water Quality Variance for Alewife Brook. The new Water Quality Variance still allows discharges of untreated sewage into the Brook. However, MassDEP’s Water Quality Variance now includes some measures to reduce the harmful effects of untreated sewage pollution.
Thanks to your comments and MassDEP’s hard work, the Alewife Brook Water Quality Variance now requires:
1. A Study on Installing Onsite Real-time CSO Notification to protect people from unknowingly walking through sewage flooding. We asked for a red-amber-green light at each CSO and where the Brook floods onto the Greenway path.
2. Odor Control. MWRA, Somerville, and Cambridge shall implement Best Management Practices for odor control for their Alewife sewer systems.
3. “Floatables” Control study for all Alewife CSOs. Somerville must determine how to fix their CSO to screen out or clean up toilet paper and other hazardous human waste products.
4. Fair and Just Financial Capability Analysis to make improvements at the local level. Massachusetts Water Resources Authority will not get away with submitting their “system-wide elimination” cost of billions of dollars. They don’t need to separate every sewer pipe throughout Boston to solve the problem for Alewife Brook. There are viable solutions for the Alewife and MWRA knows it!
5. Acknowledgement of Climate Change. Incorporation of Climate Change Impacts in planning, with future storm event reporting to be based on updated rainfall data from the latest NOAA Atlas .
6. Green Infrastructure must be considered by Somerville, MWRA, and Cambridge.
Thank you to the awesome folks at MassDEP who spent 14 months working on the 2024 Alewife Brook Water Quality Variance, including:
Susannah King, Catherine Coniaris, Areeg Abd-Alla, Eric Worrall, Catherine Vakalopoulos, Kathleen Baskin, Kevin Brander, and Lealdon Langley.
We hope that this is the last Alewife Brook Water Quality Variance. Our community deserves a safe Alewife Brook and an End to Untreated Sewage Pollution.
Thank you to the Mystic River Watershed & Charles River Watershed Associations for their major and ongoing contributions. Donations accepted here:
Links to Supporting Documentation:
2024 Water Quality Variance Final Determination
Save the Alewife Brook’s Water Quality Variance comments
MassDEP response to comments
Would you like to do more to help?
Ask your friends and family to sign the Petition to End Sewage Pollution.