Heavy Flooding Sparks Somerville Investigation

By The WBUR Newsroom
Jul 14, 2010, 1:09 PM
1 Comments

BOSTON — State and Somerville officials are trying to find out what may have contributed to excessive flooding in the city over the weekend.

Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone says he wants to know whether protocol was followed at the Amelia Earhart Dam.

“If there was any error,” Curtatone said, “I think it’s equitable and fair to ask, shouldn’t some residents and businesses made whole?”

Department of Conservation and Recreation Commissioner Rick Sullivan says the dam itself wasn’t the problem, although there may have been issues with other parts of the system.

“It was a very significant storm in a very short period of time,” Sullivan said. “Somerville certainly seemed to be getting the worst of it during that one hour and you had a lot of water going through that system.”

Sullivan says he’ll be meeting with Curtatone and other public works officials to discuss what happened. The weekend flooding shut down Somerville Police headquarters and several other buildings. Curtatone has said the city is looking at more than $1 million in costs to replace equipment and clean up damaged buildings.

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William J. Skocpol

In the early 1970′s we lived in Somerville near the Cambridge border just across from where the Beacon Street Star Market subsequently was located. On early maps this was labeled as the “Further Pyne Swamp”. Every time there was a heavy rain, the water would come back out of the storm sewers to a depth of two feet or more. The rain would come down the hillside, and accumulate in that area via the sewers. It took decades before a new system with a large holding tank and a subterranean pump was installed under Beacon/Hampshire Street, eliminating the problem. Union Square Somerville now has freshly paved streets, I believe. What better time to start a sewer infrastructure project there!