The January 13th issue of Brookline News leads with an investigation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s flood maps that were released in June. According to reporter Jenna Lang, “The new Brookline map , and FEMA’s rules, are a helpful tool for homeowners but don’t tell the whole story…” MMOC members Arleyn Levee and Kelly Brilliant are quoted extensively:
“Frederick Law Olmsted envisioned the Emerald Necklace to protect adjacent buildings from the water, according to landscape historian Arleyn Levee.
’The parkways and green space on either side of a waterway, even as sluggish as the Muddy River, were definitely designed for — and these are words they would not have used — environmental mitigation,’ said Levee. ‘Floods happened. They knew the wetlands flooded and spilled sewage all over the place. The idea was you have absorptive green space on either side, and then you have parkways, and then the building begins.’
In the 1990s, floods did indeed happen. The largest took place in October 1996, when over 12 inches of rain fell. The Muddy River and Leverett Pond could not contain all the water, and it overflowed onto surrounding roads, train stations, and buildings.
Levee remembered the floods as ‘a shock, because we were just beginning to know about 100-year storms. [The term] was just into the vocabulary. It was like we had three back-to-back 100-year storms, and the earth never dried out in between them.’
Kelly Brilliant, Director of the Fenway Alliance, explained that the problem was not just the amount of rain: ‘There was so much silt and junk, and the waterway was so neglected that it wasn’t able to properly handle the rainfall.’ Sediment, trash, and invasive plants impeded the river’s flow.
‘There was nowhere for the water to go except up,’ said Levee. ‘And further up it went.’
After the floods, environmental groups and the Fenway Alliance began what would become a $92 million restoration effort. The Muddy River Restoration Project , which was largely completed in 2023, involved sediment dredging, invasive species removal, historic landscape rehabilitation, and daylighting buried sections of the river.
This work has made Brookline more resilient against future riverine flooding, advocates say.” But flood risks are real.
The FEMA maps, which are built on data models, present a limited perspective. Storms can create catastrophic flash flooding. And damage can occur in areas that don’t seem to be vulnerable; “more than 40% of claims to the National Flood Insurance Program are from homes that are not located in mapped high-risk areas, according to FEMA .”
“’A flood map, [Brookline resident Daniel] Rees says, is ‘just one view of what the model sees, one potential possibility that might happen in the future, but it doesn’t give you the full breadth of what might happen.’ For example, consider an area that a flood map designates has a 1% annual risk of flooding. Rees notes that ‘if you’re at the very edge of the zone, your risk is a lot lower than someone who has a house right on the river.’
“…Levee spoke of her uncertainty on whether the Muddy River will actually control future floods: ‘It’s got enough place for the water to go, supposedly. But we now are calculating different kinds of [weather] systems. The amount of water that is now coming down in a storm is unbelievable’ and it falls onto a ground that is parched after long dry spells, she said. “It’s unclear whether we really, really do have flood control.‘”
With flood risk increasing due to climate change, the core question is: How will this impact Brookline and the Muddy River environments?
Read the article in full.
Map: FEMA, as reproduced in Brookline News.
