BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) – A new bioswale infrastructure project broke ground outside of Simmons University in Boston Tuesday.
“Bioswale specifically is a trench with a rain garden on top that helps manage the flow [of water] and then goes down to several pipes that filter the water and then flows down to Boston water and sewer pipes system,” Abby Oliveira, Senior Land Use and Sustainability Manager at Longwood Collective, said.
The goal of this project is to reduce stormwater flooding on the Avenue Louis Pasteur, a site that’s prone to this particular issue.
The three-year program is funded by the city and spearheaded by Longwood Collective, a local environmental non-profit that provides sustainability services in Boston’s Longwood Medical and Academic Area (LMA).
“This is the first of its kind in the district,” Oliveira added.
She said that the non-profit is no stranger to planning initiatives like this one. The bioswale project is part of the non-profit's larger effort to expand its environmental innovations.
“In terms of actual green infrastructure, [this] is new, and so we’re hoping to use this testing and other identification areas to do more of these types of projects in the future,” Oliveira continued.
The construction of the new flood control system is set to begin in a couple of weeks.
WBZ NewsRadio’s Emma Friedman (@EmmaFriedmanWBZ) reports.