by

Janice S. Snow

Submitted to

Professor Sheldon Krimsky

In fullfillment of graduate course requirement

Environmental Policy Research

Department of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy and Planning

Tufts University

© Janice S. Snow Aug. 2003. Revised Dec. 2003.

This document may be used only for non-profit educational purposes with permission

Colonial water policy of wharfing-in and damming
Evolving Groundwater Law
Litigation Spurs Action: Boston Harbor clean-up and groundwater depletion
Brimmer Chambers Condominium Trust v. Metro Dist. Commission
Creation of the Boston Groundwater Trust
The Push-Pull Effect of Litigation

Transforming the Ecology of Boston Basin: 1632-1890
Taming, Fouling, and Filling
Leveling Trimountain
The Public Health Model: Moving Water out of Back Bay
Water Supplies Move West as Waste Water Moves South East
First Metro Boston sewer system: diverting groundwater
Drawing good water from elsewhere: diverting attention from Boston’s groundwater
Transportation Tunnels
Infrastructure as Barrier to Positive Groundwater Flow

Property Owners and Sellers’ Perspectives
City of Boston Government Stakeholders

The Boston Groundwater Trust
The Environment Department
Boston Water and Sewer Commission
Boston Redevelopment Authority
Boston Inspectional Services Department
Boston City Council

State Government Stakeholders

Executive Office of Environmental Affairs
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA)
Chief of Commonwealth Development
Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA)
Other Stakeholders

The sewer system diversion was only one of several suspected sources of groundwater draw down along lower Beacon Hill and in other historic Boston neighborhoods on "made land" created upon Boston’s tidal flats between the 1820s and the 1880s. Underlying the visible city is a tangled underground network of dams, railroad, highway and subway tunnels, water and sewer pipes, utility conduits, basements and parking lots. It is Boston’s non-water, subterranean infrastructure that appears to be responsible for the serious draw down of groundwater in other areas of the City.

The stimulus to action in the last two decades has been litigation followed by recent federal and state law and policy promoting watershed-based, environmentally sound approaches to water management. To date the barriers to action are most prominently institutional missions and practices at odds with new water policies promoting local solutions to groundwater protection, lack of coordination and sharing of data among and within local and state agencies and the absence of a local or state government office or official for whom groundwater is the primary mission.

The topic for this paper—groundwater depletion in Central Boston—was suggested to me by Scott Horsley, president of Horsley and Witten, a consulting hydrologist and lecturer in watershed issues at Tufts University and by Karl Honkonen, Director of Water Policy in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. Scott and Karl introduced me to the issue of groundwater depletion in Central Boston. Professor Sheldon Krimsky my advisor for this project suggested the structure and analytical approach.

The Boston Groundwater Trust (The Trust) has provided me with crucial insight into the context, scope and response to the problem to date. I am especially grateful to Trust co-chair Tim Mitchell the Back Bay neighborhood representative and Jim Stetson, the Beacon Hill neighborhood representative for giving me detailed interviews and supplying documents not available on the Trust’s web site and inviting me to Trustee meetings. The Trust’s web site—managed by trustee, Galen Gilbert, the Fenway Community Development representative—was a rich source of original documents, illustrations and news articles tracing the groundwater crisis particularly in the Back Bay and Fenway. Also Toni Pollak, Commissioner of the City of Boston’s Environment Department and a non-voting member of the Trust, provided insight into the City’s role in groundwater management in interviews and at public meetings. Interviews were not formally structured. Interviewees were asked to define their organization’s mission, how that mission affected their approach to watershed issues in general and Boston groundwater depletion in particular and what level of coordination and cooperation they received from other organizations dealing with or contributing to the problem.

This paper is organized into seven sections including this methodology section (Section II). Section I defines the Boston groundwater crisis in terms of three key pile damaging events that re-awakened demands for government action. Section III provides the legal framework regarding water policy that allowed the sequential filling of Boston’s tidal flats and charted the state’s and city’s responses to the consequences of that filling. Section IV presents a chronological account of the leveling and extension of the landscape that resulted from the Commonwealth’s and Boston’s policies and laws detailed in Section II. Section V is organized by affected entities, individuals and organizations whose water policies and perspectives have led to at times cooperative and at times conflicting responses to the problem. The final sections survey and evaluate solutions proposed since the founding of the Trust and offer a watershed framework for developing more comprehensive, coordinated solutions to groundwater depletion and related issues of water pollution and flooding.

The legacy of over 300 years of minimal groundwater management in Boston has lead to reduced groundwater levels despite more than adequate rainfall. Within a few years of the 1630 settlement of the Shawmut Peninsula (soon renamed Boston) by the Puritans, practices and policies were put in place that would constrict and pollute its waters and forever alter its hydrology.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony’s General Court (the legislature) approved a series of structures that blocked the natural flow of water in Boston’s rivers and bays. Slowing the flow of the Charles River was a grist mill dam erected in 1634 at the site of a 1632 fish weir at Watertown Square where the salty bay tides met the fresh water Charles. A second grist mill dam, built in 1643 in the North End of Boston, stretched from Prince Street to the West End (now Causeway Street) converting a harbor cove into a stagnant "mill" pond.

In 1980’s exceptions were made by the Massachusetts legislature to the Absolute Ownership Rule. The Interbasin Transfer Act (1984 ) restricts the removal of surface and groundwater from one watershed to another. A 13-member Water Resources Commission set up in the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs (EOEA) and chaired by the EOEA Secretary implements this act. The Water Management Act (1985) regulates groundwater withdrawals. Currently, users removing more than 100,000 gallons per day must register with the state. The Act also gives the Department of Environmental Protection authority, as yet unexercised, to regulate smaller volumes of water. Because these water management laws exempt existing uses from regulation, many large volume withdrawals continue, depleting surface and groundwater supplies across the state.

A group of Brimmer Street property owners then hired Haley and Aldrich to investigate the extent and causes of the damage. In his paper describing "the forensic study undertaken to determine the causes" of the rotted wood piles, James Lambrechts, Vice President of Haley and Aldrich, describes his investigation as "a cooperative effort with the Metropolitan District Commission and the Boston Water and Sewer Commission." Records of the new dam constructions demonstrated that the principal cause of the drawdown at Brimmer Street was related to dam construction. The flow in the MDC’s marginal (sewer) conduit, which collects stormwater flows from the combined sewer (and stormwater) overflow (CSO) conduits and delivers their contents to the harbor, had been rerouted to a new well and pumping station across the river. As result of this engineering design, the marginal conduit "was practically empty all the time." What had kept the Brimmer Street piles submerged and was now gone was the "tidal backflow" that the old dam gates allowed in each day at high tide, submerging the Brimmer St. piles and protecting them from rot. The engineer who designed the sewer diversion to reduce flooding was aware that the new system also would prevent tidal recharge to Beacon Hill, but his employer, the MDC, did not report this information to Boston authorities or affected property owners. The MDC’s failure to disclose this data was a key piece of evidence in the plantiffs’ charge of negligence.

In 1989 four buildings with pile damage on Hudson Street in Chinatown were condemned and demolished. The area is vacant lot today. In 1998 an apartment building serving moderate income residents on Hemenway Street in the Fenway was torn down. The owner claimed that the expense of replacing the rotted piles to save a building with moderate rents was not economically viable. The site is a playground today.

The Brimmer Street litigation pushed the City of Boston to create a legal entity, the Boston Groundwater Trust to involve stakeholders and city officials in identifying and dealing with future threats to Boston’s historic filled neighborhoods. Underfunding of the Trust halted the monitoring effort for several years. The litigation had a less positive effect on the Metropolitan District Commission and the Boston Water and Sewer Commission which had cooperated in pinpointing the causes of the Brimmer Street drawdown but became reluctant to share additional data that they feared would lead to litigation. The MDC (now split and reorganized into several executive departments as of June 30, 2003) continues to pump water out of its Storrow Drive underpass depressing water table levels on lower Beacon Hill.

The peninsula that would become Boston was a hilly, forested landscape edged with deep bays and small coves when the first English explorers sailed into Massachusetts Bay in the15th Century. Its aboriginal inhabitants had named the irregularly-shaped, three-lobed, peninsula "Shawmut" meaning "fountains of living waters".

The security afforded by the hills and the thin, easily-defensible neck of land joining the peninsula to the mainland attracted a community of Puritans lead by John Winthrop to join Blackstone in 1630. Winthrop and his company had settled first in Charlestown but many of the group had become ill. The blamed their sickness on the poor quality of water they drank in Charleston. The forested hills of Trimountain served to absorb and filter the area’s abundant rainfall into clear springs and into fresh pools at the base of the hills. Trimountain’s broad tidal basins supplied the settlers with fish, shellfish and marsh hay for livestock. Just a few months after Winthrop’s arrival, the Puritans renamed the peninsula, "Boston."

The settlers clustered their homes and businesses around the harbor in Boston’s fist-shaped North End (a peninsula within the peninsula). The original Boston was only 783 acres. Its narrow mainland connection, "Boston Neck" (now Washington Street) was occasionally under water at high tide making Boston a temporary island. At low tide great expanses of marsh and mud were revealed. At high tide the briny bay water reached inland nearly 8 miles up the tidal Charles River to the fresh water Charles at Watertown Square. Colonial Boston was dependant on the sea and its bays for food, fodder, transportation and trade. Ferries moved people and goods around Boston and from Boston to other settlements, including nearby Charlestown and Cambridge. Ships carried goods to and from England.

Early settlements expanded along the eastern harbor (East Cove) framed by Fort Hill on the south, Copps Hill (as know as Cops, Corps or Snow Hill) on the north and Beacon Hill to the west. The settlers grazed their animals in the rich salt marshes from East Cove to South Cove. They cut the salt marsh hay along Boston Neck for fodder. With a grant from the General Court they placed a stone weir across the Charles River at what is now Watertown Square to capture fish returning up the river to spawn. In 1634 they erected a mill to grind wheat into flour above the weir at Watertown Square where the fresh water met the tidal estuary. The Watertown mill was the first of dozens of mill dams constructed along the River and in Boston’s bays.

By 1656 Boston’s river and harbor waters had been fouled by indiscriminate dumping. To reduce refuse into the Charles River estuary and Boston Harbor, Boston designated the North Street bridge area as the sole location for dumping garbage and animal parts.

Well into the 1700s water remained the primary means of transportation for Bostonians as the state legislature turned down proposals for bridges and canals to connect northern towns to Boston. The construction of Long Wharf in 1711 further defined Boston as a seaport city. But by the end of the century approvals were given, canals were dug and bridges built to connect Boston to the interior. In 1786 the Charles River Bridge replaced the Charlestown Ferry. In 1795 the Causeway Bridge from Cambridge St. in Boston to Pelham Island in Cambridge was completed. Bridge footings interrupted the normal flow of tide water in the Back Bay. Until the late 1790’s the original contours of Boston had changed little from the 1630s. Wharfing-in of shallow coves had fattened and rounded the shoreline. Boston Neck had thickened with fill on its south side, burying many acres of salt marshes.

By decapitating its hills to expand its flatlands Boston destroyed the natural Trimountain topography that had effectively captured, filtered and stored groundwater and removed waste. With the loss of the hills and the extension of low lands, there was no longer sufficient velocity to push wastewater off the hill out and away into bay with the high tide. With insufficient potable water, Boston began the 100-year journey moving farther and farther inland for its drinking water and farther out to sea to dispose of its wastes.

The seeds of Back Bay’s destruction as an estuary were sowed when the legislature chartered the Boston and Roxbury Mill Corporation in 1821 to build two power mill dams across Back Bay, in part to replace the mill lost by filling in the City’s first mill pond. The dam’s proponents claimed they would generate enough power to compete with North York’s City’s power developments and prevent the loss of manufacturing business to New York.

Just 6 years after Shattuck’s pronouncement, in the 1856 Tripartite Agreement, the City of Boston, the Commonwealth and the Boston and Roxbury Mill Corporation negotiated the ownership of the Back Bay land to be filled. The Bay was to be filled to an average depth of 20 feet with the hills of Needham. Streets were to be filled to Boston City Base (BCB) elevation of 17. Filling lots at nearly 12 feet above the mean tide was to allow basements to go below ground level and remain dry while allowing a high enough water table to keep wooden piles wet and safe from rot. By 1882 the main filling of Back Bay was finished and 450 areas of wetlands had been filled.

Building homes on filled low lands does not afford the benefit of gravity to move waste away from properties; thus, engineering drainage systems are required. With the settling of the fill, drains can crack at their connection points causing sewerage to back up. In 1876 the Massachusetts legislature approved the construction of the First Metro Boston Sewer System (also known as the Boston Main Drainage System). From 1877 to 1884 the system was built to move sewage from 18 cities and towns, deliver it to holding tanks on Moon Island in Boston Harbor and on the outgoing tide pump the untreated sewerage out to sea. In 1889 the Metropolitan Sewerage District (MSD) was created by the state legislature. The MSD drains were designed with underdrains to remove groundwater during construction. These underdrains were underpinned with wood timbers that could settle and crack over time causing cracks in the sewers drawing groundwater into the sewers. More problematic to this day are the remaining underdrains which, after sewer cracks are repaired, continue to channel groundwater away from foundation piles.

Boston constructed its first subway in 1897 tunneling one half mile from Park Street under the Boston Common to Boylston St. As the lines and stations multiplied, tunnels crisscrossed the filled areas of Boston. Early tunnels were supported by wood piles subject to the same settling problems as water conduits. When cracks develop in a transportation tunnels (subway, intercity rail line, automobile underpass or highway tunnel), water leaks in and the pumps come out, drawing down groundwater in adjacent areas.

The developers of Back Bay did not account for the barrier effect created by the old mill dam (running below Beacon Street) which is one of several pieces of infrastructure preventing Charles River water from following its natural path to fill the top level aquifers in Back Bay. Each new underground structure below the water table and running parallel to the River has contributed to the diminished flow. These structures include but are not limited to the marginal sewer conduit, old railroad trestle foundations and Storrow Drive underpasses. (Many Beacon Hill and Back Bay residents opposed the MDC’s four-lane Storrow Drive project. It passed by only one vote in the legislature in 1949.) Many water pipes, sewers and subways tunnels have been abandoned and their whereabouts unrecorded. In some areas foundation builders cut corners by cutting off wood foundation piles above the prescribed level. Boston’s underground history poses a difficult challenge to the stakeholders for whom the resolution of the groundwater dilemma is essential for the preservation of the City’s architectural heritage.

Rushing’s political exaggeration drew laughter and applause from homeowners frustrated at the lack of solutions offered at the meeting to quickly halt the decay of wood piles supporting their homes. At least some government officials were not ignoring homeowners. Boston’s Environment Department Commissioner, Toni Pollak, who was chairing the meeting and state Water Policy Director, Karl Honkonen were attempting to bring together the state and local agencies and departments involved with the groundwater problem. Honkonen explained the four steps the state was supporting to address the problem: meetings, monitoring, ongoing development projects and environmental bond funding for groundwater monitoring ($1,600,000 over next the 2 years; with $500,000 in process). The Boston Groundwater Trust announced the letting of a contract to drill 31 new monitoring wells and restore three existing wells in each of the problem areas where wood pile foundations were vulnerable to groundwater drawdown.

An Ellis Neighborhood Association member whose South End home is in one of the "hot spots" wanted his piles re-submerged, not more monitoring wells. "Rome is burning," he said. "In 3 to 5 years our piles will be fully rotted….Recharge worked in 1985. Require developers to return groundwater into the ground." Several owners suggested small scale recharge projects such as capturing storm water from roofs and diverting it to backyard and neighborhood dry wells rather than sewers.

One man cited the problems of elevator pits "and sump pumps removing water into sewers. Couldn’t this be part of inspections? he asked.

"We have to make it a priority to come up with solutions," said Rep. Rushing. "Maybe we should all go home and start digging."

Some South End homeowners had already started digging and they were none too happy with the results. In November of 2002, Haley and Aldrich, geotechnical engineers, reported that wood piles on Saint Charles Street they had tested in September 2002 were "above the water table and rotting, although still structurally viable." A second engineering firm dug a test pit to view the piles running along shared walls of other row houses on Saint Charles Street and found as did Haley and Aldrich that piles were exposed and rotting.

One Back Bay resident, complained, "it’s a government problem because water flows. We don’t hear the mayor. We don’t see it in the newspapers. If this isn’t solved we have no tax base. We have no city. The mayor has to say that to the Governor. Leadership has to happen at that level.

Another Back Bay resident was "astonished at the lack of urgency.

A third complained of a "profound lack of solutions" and demanded to know, "what are the specific next steps?"

" One homeowner wondered, "What happens if we refuse to pay our taxes?"

Alan Fink, a Coldwell-Banker Real Estate agent and former builder who has sold real estate in Back Bay and South End for last 10 years, spoke of being "increasingly concerned about the structural integrity of the properties we’re selling. I think we have a tremendous liability." He noted that one building he had sold in Braddock Park "showed no evidence of settling, including its common walls", but the opposite wall of that adjacent building "was settled." "All pilings need to be tested." He also reminded property owners of the complicating fact that many owners have rented basement apartments or sold them as condos: "All over the city we have ground floor [below street level] condos with pilings only two to three feet below living areas now; recharge will lead to flooding."

Matt from the South End, complained, "This is the fourth meeting. Are there specific tasks to do? Can’t there be something done immediately in hot spots?"

The Boston Groundwater Trust (The Trust) is the one public entity whose only mission is to focus on groundwater levels in Boston. Its "Declaration of Trust" requires it to monitor conditions that may threaten buildings supported on wooden piles and based on that knowledge recommend solutions to the City. The volunteer members of the Trust, all appointed by the Mayor of Boston, represented the dominant neighborhood and business groups in the threatened areas: the Back Bay Civic Association, the Neighborhood Association of Back Bay, the Fenway Community Development Corporation and the Greater Boston Real Estate Board. All live or work in the affected areas. Most own properties that sit on wooden piles. The original ordinance, however, did not provide for a trust member from the South End, the neighborhood currently suffering the most acute drawdowns. The initial ex-officio members of the Trust were the Inspectional Services Commissioner, a DPW civil engineer and the City Treasurer. Inspectional Services Commissioner William Sommers worked closely with City Councilor David Scondras to plan The Trust.

Five years after the Trust’s creation in 1986 by City Council ordinance the Trust had become inactive due to lack of funding for installing the monitoring wells called for in the ordinance. As Councilor Scondras, the original backer of the Trust legislation and the first Council representative to the trust, noted in 1991, "the important always gets displaced by the urgent." Revived in 1999 with donated services and private funding, the Trust initiated a groundwater monitoring program. In 2002 the City of Boston provided funding to maintain the monitoring program for six months. The current Inspectional Services chief has declared his presence to be a conflict of interest (For example, information received via the Trust about a rotted building foundation could force the inspector to condemn the building.) and he does not attend Trust meetings.

Complicating matters for all parties is that the South End with no official representation on the Trust also has the most serious flooding problem in the City. No flood control advocates were in attendance at the Trusts’s June 25, 2003 public meeting.

Mayor Menino has appointed his Environment Department Commissioner, Antonia (Toni) Pollak to represent the city at meetings of the Boston Groundwater Trust and to coordinate, City departments and contact state agencies to address the issue of groundwater depletion threatening historic structures. It is her mission according to Pollak to "coordinate city policy on environmental issues."

Because the Environment Department Commissioner is not an ex-officio trustee, she is not a voting member of the Trust.

The Boston Water and Sewer Reorganization Act of 1977 (the Enabling Act) transferred control of Boston’s water and sewer system from the City of Boston’s Department of Public Works (DPW) to a new Boston Water and Sewer Commission (BWSC) overseen by a three-member Board of Commissioners (the "Board") appointed by the Mayor. The Mayor’s Special Assistant for environmental affairs and the Deputy Director for Community Planning for the Boston Redevelopment Authority sit on the BWSC Board.

BWSC’s primary responsibility is the "provision of high quality reliable water, sewer and drainage services along its 1,021 miles of pipe to Boston customers" while "ensuring the sound, economical and efficient maintenance of the System."

The legal structure of BWSC enabled Boston to move the cost of repairing Boston’s antiquated and leaking water supply and waste water system off the City’s books. The Commission issues its own bonds to fund repairs and improvements. The Act required the Commission to prepare a three-year infrastructure repair plan.

BWSC’s Executive Director Vincent Mannering states in his 2001 annual report message that BWSC has also met its mission to provide "the most efficient water and sewer service possible." Another "primary objective" of the Commission, according to Mannering is to meet the legal requirement imposed by the Court (the 1983 CLF suit) to reduce pollution in Boston Harbor by repairing leaks to it sewer system.

Just under 60% of rate revenues from sales of water and sewer services to BWSC ratepayers fund Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) projects. MWRA delivers Quabbin Reservoir water to the Boston system and removes Boston’s waste water to the MWRA’s treatment plant on Deer Island.

When BWSC repairs leaking sewers below the water table in filled areas, groundwater levels rise. BWSC’s 1989 Leak Detection Program saved 0.1 million gallons of water per day, reducing costs to ratepayers and improving water quality. When it repairs leaks to it water supply pipes, it removes a source of groundwater recharge to wood pilings.

Maintaining groundwater levels in the filled areas of Boston is not a defined BWSC mission. Its 1994 Downspout Disconnection Program "launched to reduce infiltration and inflow" into its sewers supports local groundwater recharge, but the BWSC’s primary objectives are to reduce sewer disposal charges and combined sewer and stormwater overflows to satisfy the court order they are under to clean up Boston Harbor.

BWSC Commission has supported the Trust as it planned sites for groundwater monitoring by providing access to its GIS maps of underground structures. BWSC’s web site is slated in the Fall of 2003 to have information for homeowners on regulations for installing dry wells for the purpose of capturing rain water on site to recharge groundwater, according to Ralph Tomofrio of the Engineering Division. BWSC is not promoting dry wells as some South End residents with exposed foundation files would prefer. BWSC standards and permitting requirements apply only to dry wells that will be connected to the City’s sewers to handle overflow. It is the South Ends history of flooding that appears to be of more immediate concern to BWSC. In 1999, BWSC hired Cambridge engineering firm, Camp Dresser and McKee (CDM) to "create a facilities plan that would address the flooding problem." In the Introduction to their report, CDM makes reference to groundwater only as it related to the design of conduits for pumping water out of the South End and into the harbor to relieve flooding.

In 1967, the BRA became involved in water management in the South End, (an area, with the exception of Washington Street that is filled land) as part of an urban renewal program. The primary purpose of the BRA’s South End Recommended Sewer and Drainage System Improvements Program was to "reduce flooding" and "abate pollution" before the wastewater was pumped out to the Fort Point Channel and Boston Harbor. A second part of their flood control project was to begin the separation of storm drains and sewer drains, but their solutions did not work on stormwater flows during low tide.

The BRA also commissioned the 1986 Haley and Aldrich study of groundwater levels in Back Bay which recommended that all construction projects in areas with "groundwater sensitive buildings" undergo a "thorough review " of construction methods to "to minimize their effects on or replenish the groundwater table." Recently the Boston Groundwater Trust has been given the opportunity to review BRA-sponsored projects and comment on the proposed groundwater management measures. Many South End residents have reviewed a BRA-supported Columbus Center development and concluded that it does not adequately address harm to historic properties from groundwater depletion.

The 1986 City Ordinance designated the Commissioner of Inspectional Services as an ex-officio member of the 10 member Boston Groundwater Trust. The Inspection Services Department (ISD) (formerly the Building Department) had commissioned two studies of groundwater depletion in Boston: the October 1984 "Structural Report-Lower Beacon Hill" submitted by P.M. Folks and the 1990 "Report on Groundwater Observation Wells" by Stone and Webster co-commissioned by ISD and the Trust.

The current Commissioner of ISD has concluded that his department’s powers to investigate and to order repairs and if necessary condemn unsafe buildings conflicts with a trustee’s responsibility to collaborate with citizens to monitor groundwater and propose solutions. As a result the Trust has 9 rather than 10 voting members and lacks the expertise and institutional history ISD could bring to the Trust.

Hon. H. Michael Ross, District 8 (which includes Back Bay, Beacon Hill and the Fenway) is the designated city council representative on the Trust. He is the successor to David Scondras (the author of the Trust ordinance), a resident of Beacon Hill and a member of the Council’s Environment & Historic Preservation Committee. He has worked with state and local officials to get $1.6 million for additional groundwater monitoring in the city.

Councilor James Kelly District 2, (elected in 1983) represents Chinatown, the South End and South Boston. As Council President from 1994-2000 Kelly was an influential supporter of the Trust and stronger measures to protect groundwater sensitive buildings in his district.

By statue, the Secretary of Environmental Affairs, currently Ellen Roy Herzfelder, should have a great deal of power to protect all water resources in the state. The Secretary serves as Chair of the Water Resources Commission (WRC),"a 13 member Commission within EOEA responsible for developing the water resources management framework under which the environmental agencies operate." WRC is charged with developing ground and surface water transfer regulations. (See Section II, "Law and Lawsuits.")

The Secretary is also chair of the Board of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) the quasi-independent agency responsible for water supply and wastewater treatment for most of the Greater Boston area. (See MWRA below.) In addition three of the EOEA’s departments have water-protection programs. The Department of Environmental Protection "authorizes the regulations of the quantity of water withdrawn from both surface and groundwater supplies, and the Watershed Management Division that is charged with monitoring and regulatory activities that affect water quality and quantity within the state’s major river basins." A new Division of Water Supply Protection replaces the MDC Watershed Division but retains the MDC director, Joe McGinn.

Karl Honkonen, Executive Director of the Water Resources Commission and state Water Policy Manager had been the liaison between the state and the City of Boston on groundwater issues. Supporting a watershed based approach, he attended Trust meetings and reported to Chief of Commonwealth Development, Douglas Foy on the need to bring state agencies (MBTA, MTA and the MWRA) to the table with Boston officials to address the groundwater depletion problems. Honkonen represented the state’s water policy position at the June 2003 Boston Groundwater Trust public meeting. By July 1, with the passage of legislation to eliminate the MDC and reassign its water management functions to EOEA’s Watershed Division and to the Department of Conservation and Recreation, the role of state liaison for Boston groundwater depletion issues was shifted from Honkonen to Gina McCarthy, assistant to Chief of Commonwealth Development, Douglas Foy.

By creating the MBTA as with the MWRA and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (MTA) a distance from politics, elected officials have limited influence (nominating individuals for open seats) on their actions. The MBTA issues it own bonds and sets with its Advisory Board its agenda. General Manager Michael H. Mulhern in a letter to the public defines the MBTA’s mission "as dedicated to providing safe, reliable, world class public transportation in an environmentally sound and responsible manner." MBTA’s environmental efforts have focused on reducing air pollution not maintaining groundwater levels in the South End where their pumping is alleged to have damaged foundation pilings under houses along the MBTA’s Southwest corridor.

The position as Chief of Commonwealth Development was created by Governor Romney to lead three related cabinet departments, housing, transportation and environmental affairs. Romney appointed Douglas Foy, former head of the Conservation Law Foundation, to the new supercabinet position. Although a recent statute passed by the Massachusetts legislature defines his role as a coordinator rather than a supercabinet member, Foy is still refereed to by the Administration as Chief of Commonwealth Development. The City of Boston and the Trust hope that Foy’s office can bring together the MBTA, MWRA and EEOA to solve the groundwater depletion problem that the MBTA and former MDC have been unwilling or unable to correct to date.

The MWRA supplies water and sewer services to 64 communities primarily in the Boston Metropolitan Area, serving over 2.5 million people. Its existence is a function of the litigation and court orders against its predecessor, the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC). Beyond delivering safe drinking water from Central Massachusetts to Boston, MWRA’s priorities have been set by the court-orders to clean up Boston Harbor. (See Section III, "Litigation Spurs Action: The court-ordered Boston Harbor clean-up and groundwater depletion"). The MWRA along with BWSC is also under court-order to clean the Muddy River and as a result clean-up the Charles River. The Muddy River project will improve the River’s drainage and replant and extend the River’s floodplain. In addition to absorbing stormwater to avoid flooding, the project may also recharge the groundwater in adjacent areas. The MWRA’s independent funding from the bonds it issues and from mandatory water and sewer assessment fees on its member communities supports its large scale engineering model of water management.

The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (MTA) managing the Central Artery Depression (the "Big Dig") and the underground Mass Turnpike Extension which border the South End on two sides has pumped millions of gallons of groundwater to the harbor during construction of the Big Dig. The Mass Highway Department, successor to the MDC’s parkways division is responsible for pumping thousands of gallons of groundwater out of the Storrow Drive underpass and depleting groundwater on lower Beacon Hill.

Engineering consultants have played major roles in designing and evaluating projects that effect groundwater levels. Haley and Aldrich and others who provide pro-bono advice to the Boston Groundwater Trust also consult to state and city agencies and to individual groups of homeowners who have sued these agencies.

At the federal level, the EPA has been sued for inaction on water issues and also been active in forcing the MWRA and BWCS to move quickly to reduce water pollution. The USGS has been tracking groundwater in Boston since the 1970’s and continues to be a source of objective data for policy makers to use. The Army Corps of Engineers is often involved in flood control projects and was responsible in part for the negative effects the new Charles River Dam had on groundwater levels at lower Beacon Hill.

The Charles River Watershed Association is a strong proponent of local, low-impact groundwater retention strategies, but has focused their recharge projects on suburban areas. Preservationist groups, including the Beacon Hill Architectural Commission and housing organizations such as HUD have yet to expand their missions to include environmentally damaged foundations.

A few simple facts about groundwater should be kept in mind before evaluating solutions to maintain groundwater levels necessary to preserve wood pile foundations. (1) Water flows to the lowest point via the path of least resistance; for example obstacles such as dams, sewer lines and tunnels divert or contain the flow of groundwater. (2) The rate at which water flows naturally depends upon soil or surface permeability. Water moves quickly through porous materials such as sand and very slowly through clay. (3) Boston’s filled areas have at least three aquifers, water holding spaces bounded by materials such as clay or rock with very low permeability. The top level aquifer (the top of which is the water table) lies within the filled layer. The middle aquifer layer underlies the pre-fill soil surface of organic soil and peat. The lowest aquifer layer lies above bedrock in glacial till. Generally water does not move through the layers unless they are breached by excavations (such as high rise construction and deep tunneling) or seismic activity. (4) Pumping of groundwater from one aquifer can create a low pressure space that pulls water from a distant aquifer into the area being pumped.

The digging of significant new monitoring wells and frequent data collection from existing wells is just beginning, managed by a group of volunteer trustees assisted by volunteer engineers. More extensive mapping is needed of well data, such as recent maps of the Ellis Neighborhood drawdown, applied over street and infrastructure maps to visually indicate flows and hot spots where piles are threatened. Data from monitoring wells and flow meters required by development projects and tunnel owners such as the MBTA and the MTA should be independently gathered, not as it now is by the owners. The data from those wells should be delivered in a standard format easily integrated into the Trust’s monitoring system. All data should be quickly and publicly accessible.

Previous investigations have shown that pumping groundwater in one location can have an effect on groundwater levels one mile away. Commissioner Pollak of the Environment Department has engaged the volunteer efforts of civil engineering professors, specialists in groundwater flows at MIT, to take a broad investigative approach to Central Boston’s groundwater problem. Currently Professor Charles Harvey, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering, is supervising student projects. One student is mapping groundwater flow to make predictions as to infiltration; he has created a GIS database mostly from Groundwater Trust data to compare these maps to rainfall records. Another student is looking at chemical and biological processes in wood pile rot and investigating solutions that might protect wood support piles. A third student is investigating ground-penetrating radar to see if its possible to ascertain the water table levels without having to dig. Preliminary reports are due in late August 2003.

For many years Trinity Church and the Lenox Hotel in Back Bay and the Church of the Advent on Brimmer Street, Beacon Hill have had groundwater monitoring wells and artesian wells in their basements. When water levels in the top aquifer drop dangerously close to the tops of the structures’ wooden piles, they pump water from the aquifer below the fill to recharge the filled layer and keep their building piles wet. As Gary Saunders has noted, it can take thousands of gallons to recharge. The only permit required to dig such a well is one from the Board of Health unless excess water will be pumped to the sewer which requires a BWSC permit. But this is not a solution for homeowners; it is expensive and may potentially create subsidence problems or flooding of neighboring structures.

Recharge is best when it is based on a neighborhood districts with similar elevations and geological conditions so that repairing one problem does not create others.

Porous pavement and more green spaces for recharge are excellent strategies for improving recharge where subsurface conditions can retain water. Infrastructure and soil conditions, such as clay, underlying permeable surfaces severely limit water holding capacity.

Dry wells offer a potential benefit to those property owners with only a small amount of open space and less than ideal soil conditions. The dry well must be dug deep enough and broard enough to provide sufficient capacity and at an elevation relative to a building’s foundation to move flow toward the building. Additional excavations and piping may be necessary to direct flow and make permitted connections to storm sewers to prevent overflows and flooding.

When one neighbor pumps his basement, his underground parking garage or his authority’s tunnel and diverts water to the river or harbor he may be risking the well being of his neighbor and his neighbor’s property by exposing wood foundations to decay. When one neighbor pumps water into her property or paves over a permeable space she may be flooding her neighbor’s basement and exposing the neighbor’s mortar to damage. With detailed groundwater monitoring data it should be possible to define city districts by their water flow contours, creating urban equivalents of sub-watersheds where shared conditions create shared interests and the opportunity for shared action.

Because the City and the Commonwealth both have a stake in the preservation of historic Boston and their actions through transportation and water systems management have contributed to the deterioration of housing stock, it should be the government’s responsibility to set aside funds to contribute to the repair of these structures and to investigate alternative methods for shoring up failing properties that recharge cannot help. If a hurricane or blizzard or earthquake (Boston suffered two large earthquakes in 1727 and 1755.) were to damage these structures, public funds and/or loans would be made available for repairs. Underground damage, especially that related to massive infrastructure projects and massive pumping on a scale beyond the power of a homeowner to mitigate, should be compensated. If public officials wait until they are sued, the litigation costs in dollars and the cost in public distrust will likely exceed the costs of proactive compensation.

As with so many complex urban issues in Massachusetts, there is no shortage of intelligent people who have worked on Boston’s groundwater problem. What several reports and officials have noted is a lack of interagency coordination and sharing of information. Commissioner Pollak has called for "transparency" from city and state agencies whose missions affect the groundwater problem. She has also suggested that residents need to resist threatening lawsuits to encourage transparency and cooperation. Transparency is a democratic necessity with or without the threat of lawsuits.

Narrowly defined agency missions are also factors, with agencies often working at cross-purposes. The MBTA’s and the MTA’s core missions are transportation and in recent years they have recognized that environmental issues are also their concern. When the MBTA spent millions to replace polluting buses they took ownership of their responsibility to correct air pollution they had caused. They must see water management as a community-wide issue as well and one they must own when they discover leaks in their tunnels.

The South End presents a vivid illustration of the problems narrow definitions of interests create and perpetuate. When the tidal flats and marshes to either side of the Washington Street, (then Orange Street) were filled in the mid 1800s, the main developers, the City of Boston and the Boston Water Power Company (BWPC) did not coordinate effectively. Each filled streets and building lots at different elevations. The result was that the higher areas continually flooded the lower areas. When Back Bay was filled the new South End had to divert its sewers from the Back Bay to the harbor where tidal flows regularly backed up the sewers, flooding streets and basements. The problems persist to this day. Boston Water and Sewer hires a consultant to expand the pumping system to pump more stormwater to the harbor to prevent flooding. Home owners and the Boston Groundwater Trust employ consultants to advice them on how to retain water in the neighborhood while the MBTA pumps out water leaking into its "waterproof" tunnels. One government agency with access to all the data and a broad mission to design a balanced system to manage water whatever the source in defined water districts in Boston may offer an economical and environmentally better way to proceed than the current situation.

Requiring all agencies to put their existing missions into a broader context may reduce the tendency of some of those agencies to support grand engineering schemes when a series of smaller, lower cost, sustainable projects and practices might better meet the needs of Boston and the Commonwealth’s communities.

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