Universal opposition has scared away the MWRA from a proposal to take Magazine Beach parkland in Cambridgeport, either permanently or even just for years of storage tank installation, Cambridge deputy city manager Kathy Watkins said Monday.
“The City Council and state reps and DCR have sent very clear messages, and that has been heard very clearly by the MWRA in terms of not being an appropriate impact,” Watkins said, referring to the state Department of Conservation and Recreation and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. “I think MWRA has accepted it and has moved on from this idea.”
Representatives from the region’s water authority proposed permanently fencing off 2.3 acres of parkland at Magazine Beach at an Oct. 5 meeting about how to prevent waste overflows into the Charles River – in this case, by placing a 10-million-gallon storage tank under the soccer field. The 2.3 acres overhead would be blocked from public use for security reasons, the MWRA said. The work of digging down 75 feet and installing the tank would remove 8.3 acres of Magazine Beach from public use for six to eight years.
The plan shocked residents and even officials who thought they’d been part of the planning – among them city councillor Cathie Zusy, who led more than a decade of reclamation efforts at the park before running for office. “It’s been a long process, and the park is looking pretty spectacular,” Zusy said Monday, suggesting that land being out of use for years, and trees removed, would be nearly as bad as the permanent loss of sports fields. “We really do need an alternate location.”
A number of alternatives are proposed for control of the combined sewer overflows, the term for releasing waste into public waterways when sewer and water systems get overwhelmed, city engineer Jim Wilcox said. The alternatives include sewer separation, storage tunnels – which would also require space at Magazine Beach – and putting storage tanks elsewhere.
It is still conceivable some kind of work is needed on Magazine Beach as part of CSO control, state representative Mike Connolly said. He cited as a possibility the connecting of an underground pipe to the park’s Cottage Farm facility from “some other potential tank constructed in some better location” such as the underused Goose Park area or an MIT parking lot. “That said, there is confidence that we have effectively and collectively shot down the idea for a large new storage tank in the middle of the Magazine Beach park/recreation area,” Connolly said.
Watkins pointed to use of open space nearby that would “have much less impact and might be something that actually makes sense – and could be valuable in terms of rehabilitating that space into a more usable space.”
Any use of open space would fall under Article 97 of the state constitution, which says you can’t take public parkland for another use without a two-thirds vote of the Legislature – a law that was toughened as recently as 2022 to say alternatives must be proposed alongside the original plan, and a way to replace the land being taken with a parcel of equal or more value.
Though Watkins questioned whether more than 8 acres at Magazine Beach would be out of service for as long as eight years, she said it was also no longer germane.
“MWRA has accepted and has moved on – certainly from this idea of fencing off, which would never get any support – and if there’s going to be use of Magazine Beach in any way, on that side or the other side, it would need to be a plan that is much more universally supported,” Watkins said. “We’ve all spoken in pretty single voice and pretty clearly to the state and MWRA.”
