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{shortcode-8c0dd475ea3269f67b1a4d37d27db5cc232a1fc2}hen water flooded the home of Alewife resident Kristin Anderson in April of 2022, she waded through her basement to salvage some of her belongings and waited for the water to retreat.

Several days later, when the water finally receded, she found debris — toilet paper, condoms, and tampons. She realized her home had not just been flooded with water after a combination of melted snow and heavy rain overwhelmed the nearby Alewife Brook, but with raw sewage.

“The flood water came right in through the back door,” Anderson said.

Alewife Brook has flooded regularly for decades after heavy rains, sometimes combining with sewage water from the combined sewer system below the brook, leaving residents to wade through the sewage that runs over the sidewalks for days after a storm. This year alone, the Alewife Brook area has flooded with sewage water more than a dozen times.

And while residents have advocated for help from the city for years, governmental action has stalled due to the scale of the project. To completely end the sewage-contaminated flooding would require a reconstruction of the sewer system in Alewife, an infrastructure project that would cost “hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, if not two billion dollars,” according to Cambridge City Councilor Catherine “Cathie” Zusy.

But now, after three years of advocacy, the city has finally initiated planning to address the combined sewer overflows.

“I feel like the situation is so bad that I’m filled with hope that it can be improved,” Anderson said.

‘Seeing It Up Close’

After storms in Alewife, resident Eppa Rixey said he can see toilet paper floating down the street and “smell the shit” from the sewage water that floods the area.

Rixey, who is a board member of environmental advocacy group Green Cambridge, added that the storms often flood a large unhoused encampment, whose residents often don’t know that the water flooding their tents is sewage.

“Yes, there’s pollution all over this world, but, like, seeing it up close and having that type of a visceral reaction to it in a city is really jarring,” he said.

The issue is Alewife’s outdated sewer system, which was built in the 1800s. The system carries both storm water and sewage in the same pipe and discharges overflow into waterways to prevent flooding at the end of the pipe, which is the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant.

According to Environmental Protection Agency estimates, the Alewife Brook received 13.4 million gallons of sewage water in 2024 — nearly double the amount of water the brook could receive without flooding.

Of the four discharge sites along Alewife Brook, known as combined sewer overflows, residents say the one closest to the T station is the worst offender — flooding 16 times in 2024 alone.

The flooding is not just a sore sight and sour smell, but also a significant health risk to the floodplain’s 5,000 residents, according to advocates.

A Boston University study found that individuals living near a CSO had a higher risk of acquiring acute gastroenteritis illness within four days of high-volume CSO flooding compared to days without flooding.

Anderson said that after her home flooded in 2021, she experienced gastrointestinal issues she believes were caused by her exposure to the contaminated water.

“I mean, I got really sick. So it was digestive, it felt like maybe a flu,” she said. “It did go away, but I really don't want this to happen to anybody else.”

The Long Wait

After the flooding in her home in 2022, Anderson founded Save the Alewife Brook, an organization that advocates for action to address the flooding issues at Alewife Brook.

At a Joint Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources public hearing at the state house in June, more than a dozen residents affiliated with Green Cambridge and Save the Alewife Brook gave testimonials about the flooding. Two attendees dressed in poop emoji costumes, and others wore bedazzled poop emoji pins to raise awareness.

Rixey said the area has struggled to receive support from the state due to Alewife’s lower socioeconomic status than other parts of Boston, adding that he feels that the Alewife Reservation is “near the bottom of the list of priorities” for the Department of Conservation and Recreation.

“It’s generally an area that’s less affluent and has historically been kind of environmentally degraded,” Rixey said.

A spokesperson for the DCR declined to comment.

When two lawsuits in the 1980s spurred the EPA to clean up the Boston Harbor, the improvements included fixing sewage systems throughout the Boston area and building the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Alewife, however, was left out of the project — and now has the highest concentration of sewage pollution in the Boston area, according to the Mystic River Watershed Association.

Though the pollution is in direct violation of the Clean Water Act, a variance has been in place since 1999, allowing the cities of Cambridge and Somerville and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority to continue discharging raw sewage while they develop and execute a long-term control plan.

Advocates from Save the Alewife Brook, the Mystic River Watershed Association, and the Charles River Watershed Association have been collaborating with project planners for the last four years to produce an updated long-term control plan.

“It’s been, I think, slower than everyone would have liked,” CRWA Climate Resilience Director Julie Wood said of the planning process. “I can say for sure it’s been slower than we would have liked.”

MWRA spokesperson Sean A. Navin wrote in a statement that the department has spent more than $100 million on reducing CSO volumes along the Alewife Brook and Mystic River, resulting in a 77 percent flow reduction.

“The MWRA is proud of the progress that has been made, and remains dedicated to continuing efforts to reduce CSO volumes, which includes accounting for the impacts of climate change,” Navin wrote.

There’s movement now from the legislative side, too. Last week, the Cambridge Health and Environment Committee unanimously approved legislation to improve stormwater regulations, include green stormwater infrastructure in future planning, and create a Combined Sewer Overflow Commission. The proposal will move forward to the Cambridge City Council for a final vote at the end of the month.

“The support from the councilors at the Health and Environment Committee meeting was so overwhelming,” Anderson said. “I feel like we need to send Patty Nolan and the entire committee a homemade peach pie.”

‘It Belongs to Us’

Over the summer of this year, the Council spotted an opportunity to improve the situation at Alewife Brook alongside a project proposed by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to renovate the Alewife T station.

In a policy order passed in June, the Council urged the MBTA to make the elimination of untreated sewage overflow a top priority of the project and to implement green infrastructure at the Alewfie MBTA site. The order suggests that with proper design, the site can collect sewage during heavy rainfall to prevent it from overflowing into the Alewife stream.

The Council stressed that cross-agency collaboration is necessary to remedy the Alewife issue, and called for Governor Maura T. Healey ’92, the MBTA Board of Directors, the MWRA, and other relevant departments to work together on the issue.

While the sewage overflow occurs right next to the MBTA station — the site of the main CSO sits in Commonwealth-owned land.

“It belongs to us as the people of Massachusetts. So we want the governor to recognize the importance of resolving this issue,” Zusy said.

As storm frequency increases across Massachusetts, the state government has also ramped up efforts to reduce water pollution and protect biodiversity. This past August, the Commonwealth issued a report on biodiversity goals that specifically called for eliminating the combined sewer systems in the state and expanding green stormwater infrastructure.

In addition to sewage system separation, the plan recommended upgrades to wastewater treatment facilities to better accommodate storm surges.

As Alewife advocates continue to work with project planners, the city, and the state to address the issue, they acknowledged the complexity, expense and long timeline of the undertaking — but they say it’s worth the cost.

“They’re breaking the law at Alewife Brook,” Anderson said. “They should not be breaking the law, and they should not be making people sick with their untreated sewage.”

—Staff writer Megan L. Blonigen can be reached at megan.blonigen@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @MeganBlonigen.

—Staff writer Shawn A. Boehmer can be reached at shawn.boehmer@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @ShawnBoehmer.

—Staff writer Caroline G. Hennigan can be reached at caroline.hennigan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cghennigan.