Massachusetts Water Resources Authority officials returned to Cambridgeport Tuesday evening with a more conciliatory message about a proposed sewage storage tank beneath Magazine Beach: The plan is far from final, and alternatives are already being explored.
About 50 residents gathered in the Morse School cafeteria to question officials about the proposed 10-million-gallon tank, part of a $1.3 billion draft plan to reduce sewage overflows into the Charles, Mystic and Alewife waterways. News that the tank could permanently remove 2.3 acres of recreational space from Magazine Beach and put eight acres off-limits during approximately six years of construction had sparked outrage among residents and blindsided city and state officials.
MWRA returned after City Manager Yi-An Huang rejected the permanent loss of parkland as “not a viable proposal” in an Oct. 9 letter, and the City Council unanimously passed a policy order last week urging the authority to explore alternative locations and designs that would preserve public access to Magazine Beach.
“We have other tanks in other locations where we worked with the communities to figure out what’s an appropriate level of public access,” MWRA Chief Operating Officer Kathy Murtagh said, pointing to a Stoneham facility where a grassy field remains open above a water storage tank.
“Right now, the design’s just not mature enough to say you can or you can’t do that, and we mistakenly went to the most secure (option) for the authority,” she said. “That’s not obviously where we would land on this kind of project in this community.”
Murtagh said MWRA would also consider building the tank elsewhere, although alternative locations would require additional infrastructure to connect to the existing Cottage Farm treatment facility near the Boston University Bridge.
“So certainly, as we go through this next phase, we can look at other locations,” she said. “I will say it will end up probably being more infrastructure to build just because you’ve got to get back to Cottage Farm.”
Residents suggested nearby parking lots, MIT-owned property and the former Beacon Park rail yard across the Charles River in Allston as alternative sites.
Opponents unmoved
While MWRA officials discussed ways to reduce the project’s impact on Magazine Beach, state Rep. Mike Connolly maintained that the agency should abandon the location altogether.
“The more that we’ve talked about it, and the more that it’s come into focus, I really don’t think Magazine Beach is an appropriate place for this 10-million-gallon tank,” Connolly said, drawing applause.
Connolly said he had spoken for about 45 minutes the previous day with state Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper, who chairs MWRA’s board, about community opposition. While supporting efforts to reduce sewage discharges, he argued that the environmental benefits should not come at the expense of public space.
“Even if we could recover that land above the storage tank, if we’re talking six years or more of lost opportunity, I mean that’s someone’s childhood, that’s someone’s golden years,” he said.
Connolly said state Sen. Sal DiDomenico had also affirmed his opposition to sacrificing Magazine Beach. Their positions could prove significant because converting protected parkland to infrastructure use would require approval under Article 97 of the Massachusetts Constitution, which requires a two-thirds vote in both legislative chambers.
City Councilor Cathie Zusy pointed to another obstacle: The state Department of Conservation and Recreation, which manages Magazine Beach, does not intend to approve the proposal in its current form.
“DCR has written to me saying they haven’t permitted this and they don’t intend to permit this as proposed,” Zusy said.
Further questions
Ken Carlson, president of Magazine Beach Partners, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and improving the park, questioned whether the tank’s environmental benefits would justify its impact on the park. He said water discharged from Cottage Farm has an E. coli concentration of about 40 colony-forming units per 100 milliliters, below the roughly 400 threshold he cited from federal recreational water quality guidelines. Untreated sewage overflows elsewhere, he said, can range from 40,000 to 100,000.
Citing MWRA records, Carlson said the proposed tank would have prevented 14 of 22 discharges since 2020 while reducing the volume of the remaining eight. He characterized Cottage Farm’s existing treated discharges as having “virtually no impact on the quality of the river water,” an assessment MWRA officials at the meeting did not dispute.
Cambridgeport resident Josh Eichen, 40, asked whether several smaller tanks could replace the proposed 10-million-gallon facility.
“Can we do five and five, two, two, two and three, or whatever?” Eichen asked.
Murtagh explained that Cottage Farm captures wastewater where several sewer lines converge. Smaller tanks farther upstream would collect water the existing system could otherwise handle, requiring considerably more combined storage capacity to prevent the same overflows.
“It isn’t a trade-off of 10 here or 10 somewhere else,” Murtagh said. “It’s 10 here or much more than 10 somewhere else.”
Cambridgeport resident and Magazine Beach Partners board member Decia Goodwin also pressed officials for the tank’s estimated cost and who would pay for it.
Officials reiterated that the regional overhaul would cost $1.3 billion, including approximately $690 million in projects along the Charles River, but could not immediately provide a price for the Magazine Beach tank.
“We’ll look. We’ll get that,” Murtagh said. “It’s hundreds of millions (of dollars). It’s not $50 million. It’s not $100 million. This is major construction. It’s going to cost some serious money.”
As with the rest of the draft plan, the tank’s cost would be borne by sewer ratepayers across MWRA’s 43 member communities, Murtagh said.
Word of warning
One of the last residents to speak, Jack Wofford, directed a state transportation review under Gov. Francis Sargent in the early 1970s that helped persuade the governor to cancel the proposed Inner Belt Expressway. The eight-lane highway would have destroyed Magazine Beach and cut through Cambridgeport. Sustained community opposition in Cambridge and Boston prompted the state to reconsider its plans. Wofford urged MWRA officials to learn from that experience.
“My word to the MWRA staff, despite the years of planning, this project is not going to go in the center of Magazine Beach,” Wofford said, prompting applause from other residents. “If, as you’re driving or walking or somehow getting home after this meeting, you could give some thought to, ‘Aha, there’s another alternative that would work,’ that’s what I would commend to you.”
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