Reports: Executive Director’s Reports

January 29, 2009

  1. City-State Groundwater Working Group - The Group met again last week. Attendance and, more importantly, participation continues to be excellent. Information from individual agencies is included in reports below.
  2. MBTA - The MBTA has encountered an unexpected technical issue on the long term solution to low groundwater in the Back Bay Station area in the South End. The need to agree on whether there is an appropriate location for a storage tank or whether they will need to use a pumped system instead of gravity feed has held up final contract signing for the engineer. This is expected to be resolved shortly, with a signing by the March board meeting.
  3. DCR - DCR has completed permitting issues for the interim recharge system connection from the west pump station at the Storrow Drive Tunnel. Construction on the main project is proceeding ahead of schedule, and completion of the connection is expected in the Spring. There will probably be a ceremony to commemorate the beginning of the recharge.
  4. BWSC - BWSC expects to have divers conducting the repairs to leaks on Commercial Street in the North End and Beacon Street in Back Bay in March. Repairs to a leaking sewer line in Blagdon Street behind the Boston Public Library are more complex, but they are expected to be completed within about six months. BWSC will be repairing leaking sewer lines in several locations in Back Bay and the Flat of Beacon Hill in the next year; repairs will include the installation of recharge systems.
  5. MTA - The MTA has completed the repairs to three manholes along and above the Central Artery in the North End. Within two months, they expect to complete repairs to a drain line from the Turnpike near Clarendon Street. They have inspected their drains in the Prudential Tunnel area and have found no signs of leakage.
  6. MWRA - Construction has begun on their project to replace their sewer system in East Boston. As part of this work, they will deactivate and fill the sewer along Porter Street that is in the area of consistently very low readings; the pipe should be filled before the end of 2009.
  7. GCOD - Compliance with GCOD remains excellent. Although applications to the Board of Appeals seem to have dropped because of the slowing economy, there continue to be several recharge systems approved under GCOD almost every hearing session.
  8. Research Projects - Jim Lambrechts is soon to provide a final draft of the report on the project to develop an alternative lower cost means of overcoming piling damage. Unfortunately, the project to develop a means to remotely sense pile cutoff elevations has made little headway; what had looked promising turned out to be a false positive. Finally, an undergraduate student group at Tufts, under the guidance of Prof. Rich Vogel, will be doing a project to try to demonstrate if there is yet detectable impact from recharge systems installed under GCOD. We’ll be providing guidance and information, but there will be no financial cost to the Trust. If the data is encouraging, we may be able to pursue a more detailed study conducted by Professor Vogel as a consultant, reducing costs that would be incurred if this were sponsored research through the university.
  9. Website - The website was down for about a day and a half because of a registration snafu that has since been resolved. Other than that, traffic has been picking up since the end of the holiday season.
  10. Data Loggers - After discussion with our Technical Advisory Committee, we will be removing the loggers from the wells in the North End and redeploying several to wells in the Fenway, South End, and Bay Village to aid in our monitoring of conditions in those neighborhoods. The change will take place when accessibility to the wells improves after some snow melt.