Have you looked over the edge of a local Grand Canyon? Have you lost a hub cap or tire to one of those yawning chasms?
Let us know where the worst pot holes in the city are. Before you do though, be sure to first report them to the city’s 311 system.
In our neighborhood a large number of small pot holes seem to have sprung up over night on High St. It’s as if this stretch of road just hit its expiration date.
… and no, that photo is not in Newton.
Do we really have to report them on 311 if we put them on Village 14? Don’t city employees key an eye on this blog 24/7?
Anyway, a major gulf has opening around a man hole cover on Woodward Street, not far from Lincoln.
There’s a huge and deep one on Woodward Street between Randolph and Lincoln
around a manhole cover on the eastbound lane heading towards Route 9. I know it’s there because I hit it broadside at 5 in the morning on Monday and there was a thumping noise that developed almost immediately and warning lights about my engine and sensors came on. I Brought it to my mechanic. He was able to fix enough of it for me to drive, but I have to return next week for two new sensors. I reported it to 311.
Greg,
That is the first one I thought of! I think a Honda Civic fell in and is now in China! Chestnut street in upper falls is awful also.
I learned first hand about pot holes’ collateral damage this morning. I was walking on the sidewalk on Chestnut St this morning just as a passing car hit a big water filled pot hole. I was doused by a wall of cold dirty water. It was a bracing way to start the day.
Waverley Ave between Tremont and Washington Sts. 46 separate potholes in the 2 block stretch including one whopper that measure 4×8 ft with varying depths.
Go 311!!! DPW just patched Waverley Ave.
It would be interesting to know how much taxpayers in this city will have to spend for new wheels, tires, realignments, broken suspensions and worse vs the costs incurred by public works for a little asphalt and some labor. Calling 311 for every hole hit would put them under. Can’t the city be a bit more proactive ?
Local government has a history of poor maintenance. Look at our schools as an example,.. why are we having to tear down Angier, Cabot and Zervas schools, when their siblings Weeks, Claflin, Hyde, Warren, etc etc are still standing and viable ? There is a cultural bias in favor of high visibility, politically self aggrandizing mega projects, ( Newton North High, Austin Street, Court Street, Newton Center etc), vs down and dirty budgeting for things like, sanitary sewer system repair ( that doesn’t back into my basement with the semi annual 100 year storm), curb stones, streets and sidewalks, tree replacement ( 560 lost annually with 0 replacements), parks and recreation etc etc.
I, for one, am glad we have the 311 service. I find it very user-friendly to place requests. And the City does a good job responding in a tmely manner (at least to my requests). I also think the Public Works Department is doing a good job given the magnitude of the issue of potholes at this time of year. I am guessing that the DPW does not just wait for the 311 queue to fill up before they act. The city employees are not the problem with regards to fixing the potholes.
Yes, the City mismanaged their maintenance responsibility for years, and now we are paying for it. Now that we have passed an override and two debt exclusions, I expect the City to spend the money correctly. I will say that I have my doubts about that given one of the first actions taken was to give the school employees a free month of medical coverage. That found money could have been used to help repair the streets that our children must use to get to the schools.
@blueprintbill – I do agree that “the “down and dirty” maintenance issues have been woefully neglected for years but I see some evidence that there’s been a marked improvement in that regard in the last year or two.
Yes, for years existing trees weren’t being pruned and replacement trees weren’t being planted but I believe there’s been a big improvement recently aimed at methodically trying to get that back on a sustainable track. I’m hoping Julia Malakie, Village 14’s tree person, weighs in because I think she would know if that’s true.
Similarly, I believe a lot of work is being done to move the storm drain/ sewer maintenance model from a fix-it-when-it-breaks to a scheduled maintenance plan and to put together reliable financing to make that possible. I don’t know the details but I think Aldermen Crossley and Fuller have done a bunch of work on that. I hope they weigh in with details.
Sorry for the delay, I’ve been immersed in New England Golden Gloves the last few hours. Regarding the trees, blueprintbill and Jerry are basically both right. The current rate of tree loss is about 650 per year, it’s likely to continue at that rate because of the aging Norway maples. (For more background, see Newton Tree Conservancy director John DeMiceli’s article for the Newton Conservators’ newsletter about a year ago: http://newtonconservators.org/street_trees.htm .) There has been no regular city budget $$ for tree planting, and the Tree Conservancy has been planting about 100/year the last couple of years with Community Tree Plantings. (And if anyone’s interested in organizing a group for this fall, see our website http://newtontreeconservancy.org/programs/index.html Deadline is June 1.)
The big improvement is that the backlog of removals is getting caught up on now that we have a tree crew, and Marc has been asked for a plan to start replacing the trees that have been lost to date, over a period of the next several years. (Although this would not replace the trees that are going to be lost.) This would start with 100 trees in FY15 (fall 2014 planting) and then ramp up to more trees per year — I don’t have the numbers with me, I think it might be 800/year.
This talk of deferred maintenance is reminding me about the tree grates that I’ve been meaning to write about, now that another growth season is about to start. Will try to do that soon.
Route 16 westbound from Commonwealth Avenue to Rt. 128/I95 is a mess this morning. There was literally no way to drive around all of the potholes.
In the Depth of Hole category, I nominate the pothole I saw this morning on Chestnut St, Waban, near Thurston Road. While it looked like a normal puddle filled pothole, there was a traffic cone in it and only about 3 inches was above the surface. I drove by later and the DPW was working to fix it.
They did a good job of fixing the hole at the manhole on Woodward Street that did my car in on Presidents’ Day. I’m slowly learning what streets to avoid while getting through Newton.
West bound lane on Commonwealth Ave right near the 30K Marathon point. Holy sinkhole.
Hi Folks, although it seems a little out of place to be talking about sewer and stormwater work in the context of potholes (our streets are taking a beating this winter!) – but I could never refuse an invitation from Jerry to comment.
Yes – Ald. Fuller and I have been working with the administration for three years now on restoring Newton’s very old and leaky underground plumbing systems – 300 miles each of water, sewer and coming up next – stormwater mains and infrastructure. We are now in the second year of implementing a strategic plan to restore the water and sewer systems, which plan was crafted in the first year. A power point on the city website is still a good primer on the challenges we face and the solutions proposed. http://www.newtonma.gov/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=40846
The goals are to continue to provide reliable clean water and wastewater systems, and to get to a point of “predictable maintenance” – so we are not managing in crisis response mode. For the sewer system we must prevent clean rain water from entering the system – called infiltration or inflow – now comprising well over half the flow we send to MWRA. We all pay for this. And because our city has about 75 miles of underdrains connected back up to the sewers – in rainy months this can cross contaminate storm water draining to the Charles. So the City is in the process of disconnecting city mains from underdrains, cleaning and relining the mains to keep groundwater from infiltrating the main. Relining is a cool process where – working manhole to manhole – a cementitious sock is pushed through the pipe, which quickly hardens creating a ‘new’ pipe – about an 80 year fix. We divided the city into ten project areas prioritized by worst to best condition. Construction in project area 1 is more than half complete – and have advanced the overall program schedule to be done within ten years.
Part of the clean water in our sewers is the result of”inflow” when clean rain water is deliberately drained into the sewer system – via sump pumps draining into sinks, roof leaders or driveway drains connections. State and local laws prohibit this – though many homeowners were unaware of the condition. Over the last year the city has notified all (about 700) cases identified, many have been corrected and engineering is working with folks to help craft solutions to others.
We have also just recently appropriated funds to complete a thorough assessment and strategic plan to repair and possibly upgrade the stormwater system, which work should be done by next winter. Turns out we have much less good data on this system – but we know we face capacity issues and can see the poor condition at the outflows.
Repairing our systems proactively has already paid dividends as MWRA has rewarded the city with lower rate increases that other MWRA communities, two years in a row. But the bigger incentive is as we continue to reduce the I&I in the system – the volume of sewer flow is significantly reduced AND emergency repairs will be significantly reduced.
Our rates are paid into three separate enterprise funds – and law prohibits using one fund to pay for maintenance or repairs in another. So the strategic plan is based on a financing scheme that gradually raises rates (about 3.9%/year) to pay for this much needed work – as well as aggressively capturing any and all MWRA or other grant opportunities that might come our way. We barely have enough in the stormwater fund to clean the catchbasins – not frequently enough – so a good part of rate restructuring will be to get more funds into that pot.
This is one of the most critical projects the city has undertaken in recent years – we have learned a great deal and are committed to the follow through.
Jerry – enough detail?
Don’t forget $4.1M from the Riverside Station project to help pay for all of this.
Speaking of emergency repairs, we lost a perfectly good tree on Webster Street this winter when it had the bad luck to have a water main break very near to it, washing out roots to the extent that the tree was too unstable for the water main repair crew to work near, so it had to be cut down. Fortunately a rare occurrence — Marc had never seen this happen before in his ten or so years in Newton. But sadly for Webster Street, it was next door to where the Ryder truck uprooted another tree last fall.
Deb – thank you for the thorough, informative explanation. And for my new word of the day, “cementitious” 🙂
I liked that word, too. I think “Cementitious Sock” would be a good name for a band! 😉
Weren’t there rumors of a pair of cementious socks being involved in Jimmy Hoffa’s demise?
In a quick perusal of the city website power point, a couple of questions come up. This discussion says that MWRA assessments keep going up,.. but it occurs to me that that must be the the case, because we keep sending them more and more I/I sewerage.
One would hope that we have instituted a radical increase in the amount of sewer we will be rehabilitating. This report says that from 1996 to 2011 we have rehabilitated .3% of all our sewers ! At this rate we will have fully rehabbed the system in 1500 years. That will be year 3514. I hope I’m at the front end of the repair list. The odds seem about the same as winning the lottery.
The report also says that 22 out of 136 illegal sump pump sewer connections have been corrected. Apparently the other 114 have not been. Why not? Are there any fines or incentives in place to insure compliance ?
And about this “cementitious sock”. It sounds like a very clever, gee whiz, 80 year remedy, but the question in my mind is how thick is this sock ? What percentage of the interior diameter of a sewer pipe is lost in the process, and how much of the sewers capacity is lost in discharging sewerage at critical high charge events ? Isn’t this only further reducing our sewers capacity, thus increasing the likelihood of a backup ? Or is this yet another money saving, poor maintenance solution that only kicks the can down the road ? 80 years from now we won’t be here, so why worry. By that time though, my grand children, if they’re not back on the farm, might find things getting REALLY dicey !
Back to the power point.
The Newton Tab reports that in January this year they had five times the normal rate of pothole reports
I think this one’s the winner:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Gers_j962Jw/S0mzF8VsZqI/AAAAAAAACio/5PnZbr81qY4/s400/potholes-giraffe550.jpg
Dear Julia — re TREES. There is nasty one on Floral St. in 02461, opposite to 116 Floral. This tree leans over the street and is a hazard to trucks travelling down towards route 9. I have personally seen a truck bang on the trunk and rip off a piece of metal from its upper corner trim. If you look at the tree trunk you will see several pieces of metal stuck into the bark of the tree.
It needs to go. Thanks Malcolm X
Hi Malcolm X, I’ve passed your info about the Floral Street tree on to Marc Welch, but please don’t be disappointed if it is determined to not be a removal yet. Hazardous to the upper corner of a truck is not the same degree of hazard as a structural problem in the tree itself that could cause personal injury. Those are going to be higher priority removals. From my observation, healthy trees don’t get removed just because they’re being dinged by trucks, because I’ve seen plenty of examples where there are both old and new scars from truck hits on the same branch. And truck drivers can slow down and be more careful to drive around low limbs.
And trees aren’t necessarily unsafe just because they have a lean — it depends on the condition of the roots, the amount of canopy, etc. And a recently dead tree with no structural problems would probably be less hazardous than a live one with a limb or trunk at risk of failure and a lot of foliage to catch the wind and become heavy when it rains.
Also, just to remind people, if you’re concerned about a tree or limb, you can report it suing 311 on newtonma.gov, or calling Parks & Rec Urban Forestry at (617) 796-1530, or emailing [email protected].
July 5th A delivery truck just ran into a tree outside 116 Floral street. It overhangs. See my post of june 15th. Pity this cannot be fixed ! Shame on Newton.