By Adam Swift
Some residents of the Riverside neighborhood are raising concerns about flood control measures proposed for Mills Avenue as part of the Gibson Park renovation project.
The city’s planning department and Ward 5 City Councillor Angela Guarino-Sawaya hosted a public forum on the park, Mills Avenue, and community boatyard project on Thayer Avenue at the Point of Pines Yacht Club on Monday night.
“We’ve been meeting with residents on the Gibson Park project and the berm along with it,” said Tom Skwierawski, the city’s Chief of Planning and Community Development. “We’ve had four meetings, three in 2022 and one in October of 2023, developing the plan, getting resident input.”
Shown above, Mayor Patrick Keefe addresses the crowd at the Summer Soiree.
After those planning meetings, Skwierawski said the city initiated, once there was a shared consensus on design, the permitting process for the project, starting with the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) process.
“We submitted our initial MEPA planning review, it’s called an environmental notification form, about a year ago … and submitted our next stage, our draft environmental impact report in November,” he said.
That submission was after the planning department’s October meeting with the community, where it outlined everything it is doing in the park and with Mills Avenue.
“Since then, we have been meeting with regulators, talking through what’s allowable, what’s not, and it’s been a tricky process,” said Skwieraski. “There are countless state agencies involved here, and they all have a say in what they want to see and what they don’t want to see, and sometimes that can come into conflict with some of the things the residents would want.”
The main point of contention raised by Guarino-Sawaya and other area residents about the plan is the proposal for a berm on Mills Avenue which would cut down on access points to the waterfront and also impact the water views for residents.
“Riverside residents and I are not convinced that the berm is the flooding solution,” said Guarino-Sawaya. “The berm will block access to the beach, they are going from 11 entry points to three, which will be deemed maintenance access points. The berm won’t even be as high as flooding that we saw on Jan. 13.”
The councillor said residents were also concerned about how the construction of the berm would take some of the width of the avenue and impact snow removal.
“I believe that planning and development should really reconsider this proposal, and they should really work closely with the residents to find a better solution to listen to what they want, they want a (sea) wall,” said Guarino-Sawaya.
Guarino-Sawaya said the current plan for the neighborhood could lead to a number of long-time residents deciding they want to sell their homes. She said the residents will be writing to the state during the public comment period on the project to let the officials know what they want to see on Mills Avenue.
Skwierawski said the city is in a tricky place, because the berm is the solution that the regulators have allowed for Mills Avenue for flood mitigation in the neighborhood.
“I think a lot of residents would prefer to see a seawall, but the state is not interested in that,” he said.
The proposed berm would be reducing the number of access points to the water, with the one public access at the site of a proposed new community boathouse at 29 Thayer Ave., along with three maintenance access points, Skwierawski said.
“We heard from residents at the meeting that they don’t have a way to get to the waterfront from their neighborhood like they are used to,” he said. “They are going to walk over the berm, and that is going to compromise the integrity of the berm and reduce its effectiveness. I think the tricky situation we are in is if folks in that neighborhood want flood prevention, what we are hearing from MEPA is that this is what they are willing to permit.”
Skwierawski said the berm would still allow for access to waterfront, but that it would change that access, as well as change the view for residents in the neighborhood. He said he hopes the state considers all the questions and concerns posed at Monday night’s meeting.
