The city has received nearly $200,000 in grant funding, which will go toward implementing green infrastructure that aims to mitigate flooding in the Strawberry Brook system.
Awarded through the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program, which is administered through the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the $199,090 grant will be used to implement two elements of the city’s Strawberry Brook flood mitigation plan.
City Planner Aaron Clausen said the funds will be used to explore how green infrastructure could be implemented to mitigate flooding in two separate areas of the system, which would be along Boston Street and at Barry Park and the GE athletic association fields.
Clausen said the city was unsuccessful in the third part of its $350,000 grant application, which would have allowed for a project that would have built on the natural storage of Cedar Pond so that more water would be stored in the pond during major storm events, rather than draining into the system and causing more flooding.
“That’s disappointing,” said Clausen. “We’re excited about the grant award and I think there’s a lot of good that’s going to come from it. But we are still interested in looking at ways to fund that element as well. It would have a lot of bang for the buck.”
The Strawberry Brook system runs underground through Flax Pond along Boston Street, and continues underground at Barry Park and General Electric before depositing into the Saugus River.
Strawberry Brook was identified as a high need area through a climate change vulnerability assessment that was completed after the city was designated a MVP community last year.
A flood mitigation plan for the area was developed with a $112,500 grant the city received through the MVP program last February, which resulted in multiple recommendations, two of which are being funded with the latest state grant.
Dubbed the “Boston Street Green Street” initiative, one project would look at the entire street in terms of how bioretention cells, or landscaped depressions, can be implemented to capture stormwater runoff and absorb it into the ground.
Water would be absorbed into the ground and percolate slowly through the soil, considered a nature-based solution to dealing with stormwater runoff, Clausen said.
Although the primary goal of the initiative is to mitigate flooding during storms, Clausen said it would also provide an aesthetic improvement to the streetscape, as trees would be planted to beautify the neighborhood.
The second project targets Barry Park and the GEAA fields, the areas where the Strawberry Brook system empties into the Saugus River, for Green Street interventions. The focus would be on how the park can be used as a retention system, Clausen said.
“(It) could include green infrastructure elements around the fields (or) underground stormwater facilities,” said Clausen. “It’s a more comprehensive analysis of the park and the area around it, the streets around it, to see where these green infrastructure elements can be implemented.”
Clausen said the city’s goal is to kick off the design process for both elements that have been funded by the grant in October. Under the city’s grant application, both have to be implemented by June 30, he said.
“This grant is another step of implementing what will result in physical improvements and enhancements to the community,” said Clausen. “It’s a demonstration of how you can use a broader strategy to proactively and efficiently deal with these issues around climate change.”
