BOSTON MAYOR MARTY WALSH is urging [the Boston City Council to declare surplus several parcels of city property along Frontage Road, including Widett Circle. This would allow the land to be sold off for development, perhaps for a soccer stadium.
With the memory of the Winthrop Square garage process still fresh, we say slow down. This is public property, owned by all residents of Boston, and a rigorous, thorough, and transparent process must be followed so that Bostonians can be confident that the benefits from the parcels’ development accrue to the public and to future generations, not to the private profits of connected developers.
Widett Circle is one of the lowest-lying parcels in the city, and it already floods regularly. During last winter’s extreme storms anyone unlucky enough to have their cars in the city’s tow lot, which sits on the site today, found them partially underwater when they went to collect them. Frontage Road and Widett Circle, like much of Boston, is built on fill. Historically, it was open water, literally “South Bay” – yes, that’s where the shopping center’s name comes from.
And the water is coming back. In November the federal government released the National Climate Report, and its predictions for the Northeast were stark: increased storms, heavier rainfalls, hotter summers, more heat-related deaths, all exacerbated by our aging infrastructure including water, sewer, and storm water systems.
Maintaining low-lying parcels as impermeable surface – i.e. buildings, roads – is risky, and will grow more so. When it rains, water that would have soaked into the ground instead runs off into storm drains. Aging storm drains get overwhelmed, leading to flooding. Even new storm drains cannot handle the volume of the heavier rains in our future, leading to flooding. A built environment means fewer trees and vegetation to absorb water, leading to flooding.
but if we go through 20 years of fighting over unrealistic proposals we're all going to be staring at that tow lot for a long, looong time.