Tell MassDEP, EPA, and Governor Healey to end CSO sewage in Alewife Brook. Submit a comment today.
Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and the cities of Cambridge & Somerville plan1 to continue using Alewife Brook as an open sewer. The new plan fails to address the health impacts on people who live near Alewife Brook, who use the Alewife DCR parkland, and use the nearby path to get to the Alewife T station.
New CSO Sewage Plan Does Not Acknowledge Flooding of Alewife Brook
Why does the plan fail? The plan does not looked at over-the-bank Alewife flooding. That’s when sewage from the brook flows into the park, the bike path, and the neighborhoods near Alewife Brook2. The plan does not acknowledge sewage flooding at Alewife Brook or the associated public health impacts on the community3.
Plan Does not show Alewife Brook Flood Impacts in East Arlington
Raw Sewage in a Densely Populated Neighborhood
Often when it rains, raw sewage is dumped into Alewife Brook, a flood-prone brook that runs through public state parkland, next to the popular Alewife Greenway path, and very close to peoples’ homes. This is a densely populated area. The Brook floods regularly and there is sewage in the floodwater. 5,000 people live in the Alewife Brook’s 100-year flood plain in the area’s most diverse and vulnerable Environmental Justice neighborhoods. At Alewife Brook, people have gotten sick from exposure to sewage floodwater.
The Public Health Impacts Are Ignored
All of the sewage that is dumped into Alewife Brook is untreated: live E. coli, viruses, and parasites, including norovirus and intestinal worms. When combined sewer overflows discharge into the brook E. coli counts in the brook run a thousand times what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe. Alewife sewage flooding has made people sick. There are documented cases of severe gastrointestinal illness after exposure to contaminated floodwaters, and a Boston University School of Public Health study4 links sewage overflows to spikes in Emergency Room visits due to gastrointestinal illness. A more recent study5 found a link between aerosolized CSO particulates and gastrointestinal disease. Just living near CSO outfalls or walking past them may cause health problems severe enough to send you to the Emergency Room, especially for people with weakened immune systems, like infants, elderly folks, and cancer patients.
The brook flooded five times in 2023. Children, joggers, and parents pushing baby strollers went through sewage floodwater on state parkland. Sewage flooded a homeless encampment feet away from the Alewife T parking garage and the worst sewage outfall in the entire MWRA system.
15 Million Gallons of Sewage in a Single Storm, After $340 Million Spent
The new sewage plan ensures many more decades of raw sewage in the brook. Under the plan, **in a single 5-year storm, Cambridge and Somerville will dump 15 million gallons of raw sewage** into the brook, *after* $340 million is spent.
No to Grey Infrastructure on State Parkland
The plan’s strategy for Alewife Brook is **only 0.1% sewer separation and 99.9% grey storage tanks**, including a mile-long sewage storage tunnel under public parkland. Storage doesn’t end sewage pollution; it postpones it and only reduces the amount dumped into the Brook in isolated 1-year storm events.6 Due to Climate Change and its larger storm events, the result of this plan is no improvement at Alewife Brook. MWRA’s, Cambridge’s, and Somerville’s plan is the “kicking the can down the road” approach.
Yes to Green Infrastructure on State Parkland
And to be clear about the parkland: we say **YES to Green Stormwater Infrastructure on state parkland**, constructed wetlands like the 3.4-acre Alewife Wetland, which cleans stormwater from 211 acres while reducing floods and sheltering wildlife. Twelve more acres of DCR parkland are available for three more wetlands. Green stormwater infrastructure is a public park enhancement. **But a giant concrete sewage tank or tunnel is not a park improvement.** Grey infrastructure belongs under streets and under redevelopment sites like the Alewife T garage, not on the public’s beloved parkland.
The Real Solution: Sewer Separation and Green Stormwater Infrastructure
Sewer separation is the best solution because it removes stormwater from the sewer system. Sewer separation means increased capacity in the local sewer system AND the regional system. It means fewer sanitary sewer overflows and fewer combined sewer overflows. It means less flooding. It means fewer sewage backups into basements. It’s a win-win-win-win-win. Sewer separation is the Climate Resilient solution, because unlike a concrete tank, it is an approach that scales with Climate Change as storms get bigger. Cambridge has done sewer separation in the Huron/Concord neighborhood and that project gave us the Alewife Stormwater Wetland, with its thriving ecosystems which increase community wellbeing. Cambridge is half way done with sewer separation at Alewife Brook. Finish the job!
The solution in Cambridge is sewer separation plus green stormwater infrastructure and a properly sized tank at the Alewife MBTA station – not undersized tunnels on public parkland and 99.9% storage. And in Somerville, the solution is sewer separation, green stormwater infrastructure, and redirecting of CSO flows to an existing CSO treatment facility.
MWRA Must Pay its Fair Share. The Cities Should Not Have to Pay.
The MWRA was created by the Legislature in 1984 as a result of a ruling in the Boston Harbor Cleanup case, precisely to solve regional sewage pollution. MWRA raised $5 billion through revenue-backed bonds to do it. It is MWRA’s responsibility to address CSOs because they are a regional problem: Cambridge and Somerville’s sewage flows into MWRA’s aging interceptors at Alewife Brook, and MWRA’s own masterplan refers to CSOs as providing “additional system capacity.” Under the Boston Harbor court case’s Second Stipulation, MWRA is legally and financially responsible for outfalls still in violation, including two at Alewife Brook. So its demand that Cambridge and Somerville pay $516 million is baseless. In this plan, Boston will see the greatest investment – but MWRA is asking Boston to pay nothing. Cambridge and Somerville should not have to pay, either. With old bonds expiring, MWRA has the capacity to issue bonds to fix the problem and it has the debt service to pay for new bonds. According to MWRA, eliminating sewage pollution in the Alewife, Mystic, and Charles would cost households just $45 more per year than the current plan. $45 a year is less than MWRA’s annual sewer rate increase. The money is there.
That’s less than the cost of a cup of coffee and a donut each month.
You can make a difference! Provide a public comment today.
Please provide a written public comment and say No to the plan of MWRA, Cambridge, and Somerville.7 Speak up for an end to sewage pollution at Alewife Brook through sewer separation and green stormwater infrastructure.
Foot Notes:
[2]: G.L.c. 21§43A(b)(iv)(“land areas affected or expected to be affected by a discharge”).
[5]: Draft Updated Combined Sewer Overflow Control Plan for Alewife Brook, Upper Mystic River, and Charles River See: Figure 7-4. System Performance in 2050 5-Year Storm: Flooding Extents page 7-12 & Figure 7-6. System Performance in 2050 25-Year Storm: Flooding Extents page 7-16
[6]: The CSO storage tanks and tunnel are undersized even for 2-year storms. And when storage fills up, 100% of additional sewage goes into the brook. This could happen even with smaller back-to-back storms. Tanks and tunnels can’t be expanded later at a reasonable cost, while climate change pushes sewage volumes two to four times higher by 2050. The old combined sewer system still used by Cambridge and Somerville was built for yesterday’s storms, not tomorrow’s. The solution is upgrading the combined sewer system with sewer separation.
[7]: The MWRA, Cambridge, and Somerville plan is for no CSO discharges in a “2050 Typical Year.” A Typical Year is a regulatory construct that tries to determine when CSOs would discharge, using a model of the sewer system and projections of anticipated rain storms and rainfall data. In years that are not “typical,” that is, years with more rain or more intense rain storms, the CSOs will discharge untreated sewage to the brook. We are proud that we convinced DEP and EPA to require the CSO entities to account for climate change in their model, but for reasons we discuss briefly in this letter, the CSO entities need to create a plan to eliminate CSOs up to a year 2050 25-year storm to protect our public health, our public park, and our local ecosystem.