Reports: Executive Director’s Reports

May 20, 2010

  1. City-State Groundwater Working Group - The Working Group will meet next on July 22.
  2. MBTA - On April 29, I met with Rich Davey, the new General Manager of the T, and members of his staff. The meeting was primarily devoted to a discussion of the new approach planned to raising groundwater levels in the South End near Back Bay Station. The T will be engaging a new consultant to design multiple tunnel repair projects, high on the list of which is repairing the leak that has led to low groundwater problems in the area. The consultant is likely to be under contract in October. They will then determine the feasibility of the new approach. The T believes that the new approach may be less costly to install and eliminate long term maintenance issues. The short term solution of continuous recharge will remain in place until a longer term solution is complete. The T is planning a public meeting in June to discuss the changed approach.
  3. BWSC - BWSC plans a public meeting this month to kick off construction on repairs to the sewer under Richmond Street in the North End. They will be repairing a portion of the combined sewer overflow (CSO) on Dartmouth Street between Beacon and Back Streets that is a likely cause of low groundwater levels experienced along Dartmouth Street in that area. They are most likely to reline that section of pipe; this could happen in a few months. BWSC has completed repairs to the portion of the CSO on Fairfield Street between Beacon and Back Streets; this grouting work took place in a section of wood sewer.
  4. MWRA - MWRA will complete the East Boston sewer replacement project this summer. At that point, the possibly leaking old sewer pipe along Porter Street will be discontinued and filled in. Recent groundwater readings in areas where MWRA has completed its work have been encouraging. We will be watching this closely this summer. They have discovered a leak in the siphon under the Blue Line at Breman Street. They will be lining the two pipes as an add to the sewer project, with completion of this expected this summer as well.
  5. MassDOT - They are continuing with design work for modifications to the drainage system from the Central Artery. The decision on whether and where to introduce recharge awaits completion of some of BWSC’s repair projects and a determination of whether the recharge would be a benefit in the areas into which it can be introduced. Decisions should be made in the summer. As part of the repaving project scheduled for the Prudential tunnel, the drain lines around the tunnel will be video inspected and any necessary repairs made.
  6. GCOD - Projects in the GCOD area continue to come before the Board of Appeals at a fairly steady pace. Cooperation among the Board, ISD, BWSC, the BRA, and the Trust has assured that virtually all projects have completely met the recharge and no negative impact standards of Article 32.
  7. Website - We continue to work with our consultant to remedy some availability issues that we have had recently with our interactive map. The short term problems have been resolved. We anticipate moving the map to a new server at a different host in the near future. In the meantime, traffic to the site remains steady, with a significant number of hits on our new recharge tab.
  8. Meetings - In addition to my meeting with the MBTA, I had meetings with project teams from 282 Beacon Street, the Christian Science Church project, and the planned new Liberty Mutual building. I attended a scoping session this morning on a new student center at Boston University and will attend one on Liberty Mutual in June.