Somerville, Cambridge, and all 61 MWRA communities already help pay for Boston‑area sewer and water projects (like the Boston Harbor cleanup and the Charles River / South Boston‑area work) through the MWRA rate base. That means when the MWRA financed those Boston‑focused projects, Somerville and Cambridge were already contributing through their wholesale sewer and water assessments, even though the pipes being fixed were in Boston and Charlestown.
So the frustration is:
if Somerville’s and Cambridge’s CSO projects are part of the same regional water‑quality mandate—eliminating pollution in the Mystic, Alewife, and Charles so the whole harbor system meets federal standards—then it looks odd to suddenly treat the financing as a purely local burden. The logical argument is: if the MWRA rate base already helped fund Boston’s fixes, then Somerville’s and Cambridge’s CSO work should be treated the same way, as a regional obligation spread across the 61 communities, rather than tacked on as a separate “local” bill.
Agreed, especially considering that sewer flow from dozens of communities beyond Somerville and Cambridge take up pipe capacity that we have to accommodate, and are part of what requires us to do this work in this way; AND considering that this work is partially alleviating Boston's sewage specifically, for the cleanliness of a river that separates Boston from Boston (the Charles) and Boston Harbor
Somerville, Cambridge, and all 61 MWRA communities already help pay for Boston‑area sewer and water projects (like the Boston Harbor cleanup and the Charles River / South Boston‑area work) through the MWRA rate base. That means when the MWRA financed those Boston‑focused projects, Somerville and Cambridge were already contributing through their wholesale sewer and water assessments, even though the pipes being fixed were in Boston and Charlestown.
So the frustration is:
if Somerville’s and Cambridge’s CSO projects are part of the same regional water‑quality mandate—eliminating pollution in the Mystic, Alewife, and Charles so the whole harbor system meets federal standards—then it looks odd to suddenly treat the financing as a purely local burden. The logical argument is: if the MWRA rate base already helped fund Boston’s fixes, then Somerville’s and Cambridge’s CSO work should be treated the same way, as a regional obligation spread across the 61 communities, rather than tacked on as a separate “local” bill.
Agreed, especially considering that sewer flow from dozens of communities beyond Somerville and Cambridge take up pipe capacity that we have to accommodate, and are part of what requires us to do this work in this way; AND considering that this work is partially alleviating Boston's sewage specifically, for the cleanliness of a river that separates Boston from Boston (the Charles) and Boston Harbor