Canoeing Alewife Brook pollution. / Save the Alewife Brook photo
The MBTA board got a before-Christmas surprise, but it’s unclear whether the “package” opened by two Arlington activists and others was welcome.
In a news perspective, Greg Harris of Cambridge Day set the scene for the Dec. 19 meeting:
NEWS PERSPECTIVE
“MBTA manager and recently minted local celebrity Phillip Eng was set to deliver his year-end report, and for the first time in a long time, Boston area stockings expected better from the T than just another lump of coal.
“Unbeknown to the board, though, a campaign was poised to launch. As soon as the period of public comment was opened, wham, activists from Cambridge and Arlington sprang into rhetorical action, taking turns at a podium that represented the focal point of at least a dozen expert stares.”
Two MBTA projects at the Alewife station spurred the speakers – rebuilding the parking garage and digging a new access tunnelfor Red Line maintenance vehicles.
These worthy projects are taking shape against a backdrop of the public-health dangers affecting Alewife, on Arlington’s border: After heavy rain, raw sewage gets dumped regularly into Alewife Brook through combined sewer overflows (CSOs). Massive amounts of asbestos lie buried in the postindustrial soil where the MBTA plans to excavate its tunnel.
Save the Alewife speakers
Two speakers from the Arlington-based activist group Save the Alewife Brook spoke first. Member Eugene Benson, a retired environmental lawyer, pointed out how badly out of compliance on clean-water standards Cambridge and the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority are. Group founder and Arlington Town Meeting member Kristin Anderson described how raw sewage inundated her [previous] household. She cited 51 million gallons of sewer overflow in 2021.
They had two specific requests. In that the MWRA and Cambridge are considering underground storage of CSO water so that they don’t dump sewage to the brook, they asked the T to coordinate with MWRA and Cambridge to set aside space during the Alewife garage rebuild for underground sewage storage.
Benson explained further to YourArlington: “The idea, which is common in some other parts of the country and that MRWA employs in South Boston, is to divert the combined sewage from the sewer system to storage during rainstorms before the sewer system capacity is reached and the CSOs activate.
“The sewage is then released to the sewer system for treatment at Deer Island after the storm is over and the sewer system then has capacity to accept the flow. Of course, there is much engineering and construction to make that happen.”
They also asked the board to involve the public and form a community advisory group.
Board ‘wakes up’
In his Cambridge Day perspective, Harris wrote: “The parade of speakers, though, caused the board to wake up. Looks got exchanged. Notes taken. Eng blinked, his head cocked to one side as if he was hearing whatever note tells managers we just might have a problem.”
Following Save the Alewife reps, Harris wrote, speakers from Cambridge’s Cambridge4Trees or living in North Cambridge “hammered at the issue of asbestos and the tunnel plans. It was a rhetorical tour de force of environmental alarm-sounding, centering on the lifelong risk to children, not just those resident in the neighborhood, but the not-small percentage of Cambridge youth who play on and near Russell Field, where Cambridge Rindge and Latin School’s Falcons teams practice.
“The tone was respectful – several highlighted the ‘new T’ under Eng and took time to appreciate that they’d ridden a newly speedy Red Line train to get to this meeting – but there were pointed questions.
“Why was the T proposing to use a looser standard of safety for handling asbestos than the town of Cambridge specifies? Why were so many trees being sacrificed? Why was there no public consideration of an alternate tunnel site nearby, where there are fewer trees and no asbestos to worry about?
“Most fundamentally: Why wasn’t the public consulted on this plan?”
The official agenda did not mention the Alewife issues that speakers raised.
Harris wrote: “I wanted to stand up and cheer. Not just as a neighbor of the Alewife MBTA stop, a sometime-kayaker of the Alewife Brook and a parent whose kids grew up playing baseball and lacrosse at Russell Field, but as someone who struggles with activism and yet knows how much a community depends on those with a sense of place – and an instinct to protect.”
This news perspective by Greg Harris, first published Dec. 29, 2024, by Cambridge Day, was reintroduced for publication by YourArlington on Tuesday. Dec. 31. Read his entire original account here >> Harris is the founding editor of the literary magazine Pangyrus and the founder and co-director of Harvard LITfest.
