Flooding

If you have experienced flood related losses, you should move quickly to start a FEMA relief application — call 800-621-FEMA or go to FEMA’s website.

I was disappointed by how our regional infrastructure performed during the most recent flooding event. We had both severe sewer backups and severe stormwater flooding in many neighborhoods in my district. While we have made progress over the last few years, it is clear that we have to keep at our efforts.

For those who focus on the details of flood events, here is a collection of data points from my travels around the Alewife and Mystic from Sunday into Tuesday. It is important now that we assemble observations from this event and learn as much as possible. Clarissa Rowe will be convening a meeting of the Arlington-Belmont-Cambridge Stormwater Flooding Board for that purpose.

I had been Selectman in Belmont for only a couple of months, when, in the major June 1998 rain storm, a constituent called me late one night to come see the raw sewage rising out of the sink in his finished basement.

The single most immediate priority for flood control is assuring that the Alewife Brook and the Mystic River have the capacity to drain large rainstorms. Recent progress is encouraging.

Summary of a meeting that occurred at the State House (September 25) regarding the status of Department of Conservation and Recreation issues in the Alewife area.