Reports: Executive Director’s Reports

March 2, 2009

  1. City-State Groundwater Working Group - The Group will meet again in April.
  2. MBTA - The MBTA is working with the City, the Commonwealth, and the Trust to direct the state’s money for the effort to raise groundwater levels in the area near Back Bay Station to provide a segregated maintenance to assure that the long term solution will be maintained in proper working condition.
  3. DCR - DCR should be able to complete the connection that will allow any water handled by the west pumping station of the Storrow Drive Tunnel to be recharged into the galleys installed under Back Street by BWSC early this spring.
  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 expects to complete the repairs to leaks in a drain line near Clarendon Street by April.
  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 - I met with Prof. Rich Vogel and his undergraduate students at Tufts to kick off their project to determine whether we can yet see quantifiable positive influence from some of the recharge systems installed under GCOD. They will report at the end of the semester.
  9. Website - Traffic at the website was up in February from its levels in January.
  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.