What lies beneath
Low ground-water levels are causing some Boston structures to rot under the surface
From the front, 6 Cazenove St. looks like a typical South End brick row house. But out back, a bin that holds dirt and debris from a covered pit hint at the disease eating away at the guts of the building.
The four-story house's pilings are rotting, because the ground-water levels in this filled part of old Boston have dropped, leaving the wood exposed to air and bacteria. Neighbors said the property owner abandoned repairs after realizing how extensive the damage is.
"I don't think he realized what it would entail financially," said Catheryn Sanfilippo , a realtor who lives next door. "We know his pilings are gone. The new owner has the dirt still piled in his backyard, so now we've got this open cavity, and we don't know what structural damage it's continuing to do. And under the house you can hear rats running around."
Like a spreading virus, properties in some Boston neighborhoods continue to be afflicted with major structural problems caused by diminishing ground water. Leaks in subsurface structures, such as subways, highway tunnels, and deep basements, drain water from the soil, while above ground, the continued rebuilding of Boston has left the city with fewer unpaved surfaces that allow rainwater to seep back into the ground and recharge ground-water levels.
This has been a long standing problem in Boston, especially in the in-town neighborhoods. Much of those areas are built on fill, and to support structures there, builders of properties before 1920 or so drove wooden pilings as deep as 40 to 50 feet into the underlying mud and hard clay. There, ground water preserves the pilings.
But a new effort coordinated by City Hall should make significant progress in arresting the depletion of ground water. Substantial new or redevelopment projects in affected areas must now be designed to have no negative effect on ground water and to help recharge ground water, under new zoning rules adopted by the city.
The first such recharging systems under the zoning requirements are scheduled to be installed this spring under the sidewalk of the former Red Cross building on Columbus Avenue in the South End, which is being converted into 63 condos and retail space.
The affected areas of the city include the Back Bay, South End, Bay Village, Chinatown, Fenway, and the flat of Beacon Hill. The North End, Bulfinch Triangle, and Fort Point Channel neighborhoods will soon be added to the special zoning district, called the Groundwater Conservation Overlay District.
A model of the new type of development is under construction in the Back Bay, the 32-story Clarendon residential complex, by a Boston developer who had his own nightmarish experience with ground water problems at his Beacon Hill home back in the 1980s.
Robert L. Beal , president of Beal Companies, had to tear down and rebuild his Brimmer Street house, after settling ruined the foundation, buckled floors, and caused cracks to spread throughout.
"What happened to me was so severe that I decided to move out, and the day I moved out the window in the library blew out, because the pressure of the settlement was so great," he said. "I had to demolish the house, and the only thing that remained was the chimney."
Now, Beal's Clarendon project is designed to have no negative effect on ground water. For example, the garage, which will reach 45 feet underground, will have waterproofed slurry walls built with heavy materials that can withstand pressure from ground water; traditionally, that water pressure would be relieved with drains. The development is also sinking six wells on site that will funnel rainwater into the soil instead of storm drains, recharging ground water.
The developers "understood how important the problem was and committed to addressing it early on in the discussion," said Elliott Laffer , executive director of the Boston Groundwater Trust, which was created in 1986 to study ground-water problems.
Beal said that he and Bruce A. Beal , his brother and partner, "knew the significance of this issue, and we've been very sensitive to it," he said. "But even if I hadn't had this personal experience, we would've have proceeded the same way."
Ground water panics have ebbed and flowed in Boston, starting in 1929 when the walls of the Boston Public Library started cracking -- its pilings had rotted and a leaky sewer nearby was blamed. In the 1930s, the federal Works Progress Administration sunk about 700 observation wells, but many were paved over and lost.
In the 1980s, when ground-water problems flared again and homes with rotted pilings were torn down on the flat of Beacon Hill and in Chinatown, Beal and others lobbied for the creation of the Groundwater Trust. But even after, Beal said little progress was made.
"Unfortunately, in the '80s and early '90s, there was little focus on this," he said. "Nobody cared."
Mayor Thomas M. Menino revived the Groundwater Trust in 1997.
"People are sensitive to the issue now," Beal said.
Under Laffer, the trust unearthed old monitoring wells and dug new ones, and now monitors 800 wells. City and state agencies that formed a working group in 2005 have collaborated on a redesign of the Storrow Drive underpass, due for reconstruction, to boost ground-water levels. The agencies are also working on the MBTA's new recharging program. The Storrow Drive underpass and the T's Orange Line in the South End have been blamed for sucking in ground water.
James Hunt , Boston's chief of environmental and energy service, said the city is also encouraging homeowners to do their own recharging by directing rainwater that runs off the roof into a dry well. But homeowners should consult with the city's water and sewer department to make sure they do it properly, he said. And the Groundwater Trust is asking homeowners with leaky basements to fix the leak instead of just pumping out the water.
Replacing the rotted tops of wooden pilings with steel and concrete beams can cost at least $250,000 and takes months. Retired media executive Lewis Lloyd paid that much at his Beacon Hill home, where workers spent nearly six months in a "gigantic hole" under his house doing "very messy, very noisy, and very expensive" work.
"It didn't rot every piling," he said. "But some were so soft you could stick your finger into them.
Gordon Richardson , chairman of the Citywide Groundwater Emergency Task Force, a network of homeowners, said all of Boston's filled lands should be included in the ground-water district.
"I'm mindful that the city and state have come a long way and have cranked up the machine to get things to happen," Richardson said. "But it continues to worry me a lot. We haven't solved it yet."
In the South End, meanwhile, neighbors of 6 Cazenove St. said the house sits empty and they have not received any indication of when the pit in the backyard will be filled, or the problem fixed.
City and county records identify the property owner as Bruce Molemi. Attempts to reach Molemi at several addresses were unsuccessful.
Sanfilippo, who would only identify the owner as "Bruce," recalled him as not comprehending what happened to his house.
"Every once in a while he'd be plugging away at the house and he'd ask me, 'These pilings, what's that all about?,' " she said.
Now, though, Sanfilippo said the neighboring house has settled, and the movement between the attached homes opened a gap that allowed water to leak into her house. Unable to contact her neighbor, Sanfilippo said she spent almost $800 patching up the neighboring building's wall.
The neighbor on the other side of the house is also frustrated at the lack of attention to the pit.
"The city should put a limit on the time pilings are exposed," said Peter J. Logan. "This was opened a year and a half ago and nobody knows what the exposure to the air will do or what problems it will cause for me and my neighbor."
Hunt said city inspectors tried to examine the Cazenove Street house, but were unable to access the property.
The former owners of 6 Cazenove St., Carter and Lucy Jefferson , decided to move after concluding that repairing the house was not how they wanted to spend their retirement years, said Carter Jefferson. They sold the house in 2005 to Molemi for $848,000, around $242,000 off the price they wanted for it.
"Boy, are we glad we got out of there," he said. "We had an idea inside the house that something was wrong when 90-degree angles weren't quite 90 degrees anymore and things didn't look the way they should. So we just told the realtor to sell it. And now we're as happy as clams that we don't have to worry about that house." 