Reports: Executive Director’s Reports

October 25, 2007

  1. City-State Groundwater Working Group - The Working Group met this afternoon. Attendance and cooperation remain excellent. Specific information from each agency is below.
  2. DCR - The DCR has indefinitely postponed filing the Draft Environmental Impact report for the Storrow Drive tunnel project while they consider additional alternative solutions. They are currently in the design and bidding phase for interim repairs designed to extend the life of the existing tunnel. As part of that process, they continue to study the implementation of interim recharge along Back Street. A decision on whether to install the interim recharge system will come after the scope and duration of the interim repairs is clearer.
  3. MBTA - The engineers working on the long term solution to the low groundwater levels in the South End near Back Bay Station have reached consensus on an approach and are working on a letter report which the MBTA hopes to receive next week. They will then convene a joint meeting of the Action Team and the Technical Advisory Committee to the City-State Groundwater Working Group to make sure there is agreement. There will then be a public meeting to explain the solution. Both meetings are planned for November. The plan would then be presented to the MBTA General Manager, probably in December, for authorization to proceed to engineering. The T hopes to have construction under way by late summer 2008.
  4. BWSC - The Back Street project is complete including paving except for the installation of speed bumps and replacement of two BGwT monitoring wells that were destroyed during the project. These should be completed shortly. BWSC has completed the television inspection of about 10 miles of low level pipe, about 86% of the project. They have found about two miles that warrant repair, but no obvious groundwater leaks. They are still looking at the area around Tremont and West Brookline Streets to see if they can determine the reason for the low groundwater levels there. Within the next two weeks, they expect to televise the pipes around Commercial and Richmond Streets in the North End to see if there is leakage that could be causing low groundwater levels there.
  5. MTA - The Turnpike has inspected the plenum that runs below the Central Artery and have not found any signs of groundwater leakage. This covers the area between the Zakim Bridge and Commercial Street. They are trying to work out a way to remotely monitor the pumps located at the midpoint of the Sumner and Callahan Tunnels to determine if they are pumping during dry weather. They will also do additional monitoring of the drains in Back Bay as the Columbus Center construction gets going to see if there is anything that could be lowering groundwater levels, especially in the area around Exeter Street.
  6. MWRA - The MWRA remains on target to begin construction on their major CSO project in East Boston by summer. When this project is complete, virtually their whole system in East Boston will be new. The existing pipes in the area near Porter Street will be abandoned and filled in. In the interim, they will conduct another television inspection in the area of Porter and Bremen Streets. They will be looking to see if the repairs done last year are holding up and if there is another potential cause for the extremely low groundwater levels at that location.
  7. North End - We are scheduled to install an injection well in the BRA owned parking lot near Fulton and Cross Streets so that BWSC can inject dye into the ground so that we can attempt to find where the groundwater is going. There is a very sudden and drastic dropoff in groundwater levels occurring in that area, and no one has been able to come up with a reason. Infrastructure inspections to date have not shown a cause.
  8. Prudential Center - I filed comments on the groundwater aspects of the PNF, posted on our website. The proponents should be coming back shortly with more detailed plans on how they will meet the recharge requirements of the GCOD.
  9. New Well - The new well on Exeter Street near the Lenox Hotel, to be paid for by the hotel, will be installed next week.
  10. Website - Visits to the website continue at around 200 per day. While less than the level earlier this year, it is still well above what we had seen before that.
  11. Research Projects - We have identified a location in East Boston to install our pilot foundation repair system. We are working with the Department of Neighborhood Development and the tentatively designated developer who plans to raze the house when our test is complete. If all goes as planned, he will get a new foundation sized to match the new structure he wants to construct. Our coop student, Cao Le, working under Jim Lambrechts, is spending about half of his time on design of the project. Funding will come from the EPA grant that the City received for groundwater related issues. Work is tentatively planned for the Spring. Our project to remotely determine pile cutoff elevations is headed back to the laboratory for another try. Hopefully, we’ll have some results soon.
  12. Community Meeting - I met with the West End Civic Association’s Zoning and Planning Committee on October 1. They had many questions about the whole groundwater issue and felt that the meeting was very useful.
  13. Comment Letters - In addition to the letter on Prudential, I filed comments on the Hong Lok House in Chinatown. Both are posted on our website. I will be attending a scoping session tomorrow and expect to subsequently file comments on the Boston East project in East Boston.