The Flood Forum Special Committee’s report to the Board of Alderman indicated that a lot of planning and work needs to be put into finding solutions to the city’s flooding problem

By Jim Clark

The report of the Flood Forum Special Committee meeting as a Committee of the Whole was presented to the Somerville Board of Alderman at its Regular Meeting on Thursday of last week.

The Special Committee, comprised of Board members Maryann Heuston of Ward 2, Mark Niedergang of Ward 5, and Robert McWatters of Ward 3, met on Tuesday of last week to discuss findings related to the flooding issues facing the city.

The meeting was also attended by Ward Six Alderman Rebekah L. Gewirtz, Alderman at Large Mary Jo Rossetti, Ward Seven Alderman Katjana Ballantyne, and Alderman At Large John M. Connolly, as well as Water Superintendent Ginger Barrett, Michael Glavin from the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development (OSPCD), the Inspectional Services Division’s (ISD) Goran Smiljic, Assistant City Solicitor Matthew Buckley, City Engineer Melissa Miguel, and Stan Koty from the Department of Public Works (DPW).

A good number of city residents were also in attendance, and they were allowed to express their concerns and ideas on the issue.

In submitting the report at Thursday’s Regular Meeting of the Board, Alderman Heuston summarized the Committee’s findings for those present.

Heuston began by describing how residents at the meeting described the flooding problems that they have been experiencing, the costs involved with damage to their property, manhole covers coming up and the resulting sewage that would follow. The Alderman stressed that everyone on the Committee felt strongly committed to finding solutions to the flooding problem.

“The reason we had so many different department heads at this meeting is because this is a multi-faceted problem,” Heuston said. “You would think it all sits in engineering, but it really doesn’t. In fact, some of the residents who live in new construction talked about the fact that their developer, for instance, could have chosen to put back-flow preventers in when they were constructing. But they chose not to and, of course, the city doesn’t require back-flow meters, and we haven’t heard back from the water department if we could require them. That question is still out for discussion.”

Heuston added, “We also found out that the City of Cambridge employs a ‘stretch code’ to their state building code and somehow figures out a way to incorporate that into building plans. And we were discussing as a group whether we could do that as a city.”

The Alderman said that a lot of questions were raised at the meeting and that the consensus of the participants was that the Board needs to take the issue on as a very important project. She cited the need to look at various infrastructure funding sources potentially available in light of the increased amount of development that will be taking place throughout the city.

“The City Engineer estimated that it would take over $5 billion to address the infrastructure problem that we have in this city,” Heuston said. “We have a city sewer system that is about 125 years old. When you speak to engineers and they talk about these brick chimneys underground, when those collapse then we really begin to have problems. Tree roots eat into our sewer system and we have problems.”

Heuston indicated that there will be a follow-up meeting where the various city department heads will be expected to come up with viable strategies for achieving improvement over the current situation. She also stressed the importance of solving this problem as a quality of life issue for city residents.

The next Committee meeting is expected to be scheduled to take place within a couple of weeks, and the public will be invited to attend and be heard.