In its annual report card, the EPA has given the Charles River a grade of A- for water quality during the calendar year 2013. It is the highest grade EPA has issued since the 1995 inception of the Clean Charles River Initiative.


MWRA has completed a number of projects under the federal court-ordered Long-Term Combined Sewer Overflow Control Plan that have had enormous benefits to water quality in the Charles River. Recently, the Town of Brookline completed a $25.6 million project to separate its remaining combined sewers that had overflowed to the Charles River in large storms, and Boston Water and Sewer Commission completed a $10 million project to build storm drains in the Bulfinch Triangle and North Station areas, remove stormwater from the sewer system and close a combined sewer overflow outfall in the lower basin. MWRA also completed a $3 million optimization project that has greatly reduced discharges from its Cottage Farm CSO treatment facility adjacent to Magazine Park, and the City of Cambridge continues to aggressively pursue sewer separation projects to further reduce combined sewer overflows to the Charles River.

For more detail on MWRA’s work to keep to control combined sewer overflows, visit our CSO Control Program page.

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