Heavy metals?? (Air guitars)

Heavily diluted by rain water.

I wouldn't drink it, but skin contact would not be an issue.

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🤘

It’s your one way ticket to midnight? Call it! Heavy metal!!

“Ale Wife Brook” great band name

Umm, are we drinking it? Isn't Fresh Pond one of the reservoirs and right next to there?

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We think that the pollutants in the sediment come from local industry and from the sewage pollution.

Alewife Brook was hydrologically connected to Fresh Pond. In fact, the Alewife Brook used to be a substantial river before that connection was severed. Some people believe the connection is still there. But it would take a large storm event for the Alewife water to get into Fresh Pond.

Lmao Jesus christ OP, skin contact with some forever chems aren't going to harm the jogger any more than putting a cell phone against your head might

This is the kind of over-exaggerated alarmism I log onto social media to consume in the morning. The biggest issue I see is that your shoes will get wet running through this

Like a storm event significant enough to cause flooding in the area?

It's treated and filtered before being used as drinking water. When Cambridge switched to MWRA water a while back, it was because they were installing a new filtration system.

Yeah OP seems to be a bit dramatic….just a little flood

This whole area is predicted to be a massive flood zone in the not so distant future

Not sure what the definition of “massive flood zone” is. But, there are currently 5000 people who live in the 100-year flood plain surrounding the Alewife Brook.

Eh, strengthens the immune system

We’d like to see the brook dredged, to remove the toxic chemicals, to increase flood storage capacity, and to improve water quality. And the reason for this is the the Alewife Brook floods into residents’ homes. I think being dramatic about PCBs is fair in this case. It’s a public waterbody. It belongs to the people. It should be safer than it is.

Fresh pond is upstream.

Plus cab fare to cross railroad tracks.

What does that have to do with a jogger walking through it?

Good morning and Merry Christmas. We don’t think the water is safe. There was not a sewage pollution discharge into the Alewife Brook yesterday. But if the rain had come down harder and faster, then there would have been raw sewage in the brook. We do know that there are PCBs and PAHs and heavy metals in the sediment, but no one has done any kind of health study on the folks who live next to the brook who get flood water in their homes. I personally had the Alewife Brook in my house when there was flooding and I got really sick from it. Anyway, while we’re happy to save the determined jogger from getting his shoes wet (and i still can’t believe he wanted to run through it for that reason alone),… we also want to share the message that the brook is not safe, especially when it floods. I’m sorry if I failed to get the message across here, lolz.

Yes, Fresh Pond is upstream of the Alewife Brook. And during big flood events, the direction of the brook reverses, sending it’s contaminated water upstream. The storm surge flood maps of future years are frightening.

It is definitely interesting that the elevation of Alewife Brook is less than 10 feet above sea level.

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I don't think it reverses flow during typical flood events -- only if the Amelia Earhart dam in Everett is overtopped by rising sea level / storm surge, which would make the Mystic River flow in reverse.

I’ve seen the Alewife reverse direction during major storm events, with no breach at the Amelia Earhart Dam. What happens is the Mystic River rises above the height of the Alewife and then tailwater from the Mystic fills the Alewife Brook and it reverses direction. For reference, this is documented in the Tri-Community Working Group Final Report from 2005. This statement is not meant to underplay the seriousness of a breach of the dam. But it’s important to understand how slow the Alewife Basin is and that the Alewife does reverse direction in large storms.

Here’s a link to the Tri-Community Working Group document