Public Comment

Transcript (~1 h 2 min @ 10:00)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 10:14 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Is there a motion to open the floor for public comment?

▶ 10:16 Speaker 5: So moved, Madam Chair. Second.

▶ 10:17 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Motion to open the floor for public comment has been made by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Zwirko. Just because we have a lot of people here tonight, I am sorry that we cannot add more chairs. We are at capacity for the fire code, so we'll all try to speak loudly enough for you to be able to hear us. And because there are many of you who may not have joined us often before, I'll just quickly explain. when you if you would like to come forward any member of the public is welcome to do so to speak on the order on our agenda tonight we have one order that is ordered related to an update by city officials on matters related to the June 20th 2019 Brazil Street sewer backup if you would like to come forward you can sign in and state your name and address for the record under our rules you have up to 10 minutes to speak and again it would be on this particular order because we may have multiple people who are in attendance wishing to speak we will need to keep you to that 10-minute maximum the rules will then restrict us from engaging with you immediately so you all will speak to us and we would we welcome your thoughts and your questions but we do not engage back and forth with you at this time instead we certainly will take your thoughts and into consideration at the point in time when we move to the next motion the order on our agenda where we will hear from the city officials and we will ask questions as well so we will be listening at this point in time my name

▶ 11:49 Speaker 6: is Ted Kenny reside at 1062 Main Street Burroughs Mass I've had a chance to read

▶ 12:00 Speaker 6: your report that the city paid for and what really struck me when I read that

▶ 12:06 Speaker 6: report it's all the pictures it was almost like you're saying the residents maybe dumping grease or whatever down the drain. You know, you wash dishes, you wash your hands, you have a dishwasher.

▶ 12:22 Speaker 6: And that report made it sound like possibly it's the end user, not the city,

▶ 12:30 Speaker 6: which bothered me because I probably wouldn't have came if I didn't read that report. All right? I think what's more important here, if this has happened before, and it was sort of quietly taken care of, we need to really address these issues.

▶ 12:48 Speaker 6: We need to be honest. You know, we have two enterprise accounts, I guess. We have one for water, and we have one for waste.

▶ 12:59 Speaker 6: The question becomes, how much money have we spent on the waste for water? do we have problems in other parts of the city that are just waiting to happen i feel sorry for the people on brazil street i feel sorry for what they've gone through you know has the city moved quick enough has the city addressed all their needs

▶ 13:25 Speaker 6: has the city bent over backwards after looking at those photos i have to say yeah trees grow plants grow so the roots are going to go through and break a lot of pipes there's no doubt about that okay you know we're the third highest in water and sewer so the question has to become yes we're taking care of a lot of water pipes we've upgraded the services but what have we done for sewer for the waste in people's houses going out to the main connections the pipes too small they need to be upgraded what is really the long-term plan we need to start discussing that we shouldn't wait for another brazil street to happen because if we do it means we're slacking we're not doing the job that we need to do the city has grown i've been here 22 years folks the city has grown so much in the last 10 years and part of the reason the city

▶ 14:23 Speaker 6: has grown is that we invest we change our zoning laws so that we can build and that's all we've been doing is building and we're adding to the system so there's a lot more on the system you know it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out okay every time you add another house every time you add another apartment or a complex or a business or a new business and talking about business how much money is existing right now in the enterprise accounts for new hookups how much money is really there and how is that money being used i think that's another very important question i think there's a lot of questions and we need to be able to see and truly understand how this money is allocated you know the story is how water and sewer works really i guess is uh everything's related to each other so you can charge it off okay and that raises questions too because it's how you allocate what this is part of okay you know i'm just an average joe i try to understand this i try to ask a lot of questions and i expect real answers not false answers or well this is how this works but because we have this or something else is related to this this person works in this department but that's why we we charge it against this account you know it's almost like it's hard to understand it it really is it's sad it should be cut and dry people should be able to look at a look at it and see how it really explains how we're spending our money okay because it's not very explainable you know to me i'd rather hear the truth

▶ 16:19 Speaker 6: and told something else that's not even true okay there's not a lot of people that will speak but tonight we have a full house for the first time in some time and i guess it's not one of the people that live in that area but maybe there's other people that live in this community that really care okay people have stayed here because they care even with the high water and soil rates we're still here okay it's you know i think a lot of us want answers we don't want to live in

▶ 16:49 Speaker 6: fear of another backup nobody should live that fear you have to worry about it never worry about that okay if it's on my end from my house and i have to have someone come in and run a snake out to the street that's fine no problem but if we have problems where we we do have money i guess we spend money checking out more of our pipes which are the waste pipes from our homes or in the streets to see what they really look like we'll probably have a plan you know we've had pipes that have been in there since the early 1900s 1904 1905 whatever i can't remember off the top of my head okay and we haven't done a thing to them or some places maybe we have i don't know what the answer is but i think every person in this community needs to hear the truth. It's not about pointing the finger at the homeowners or the renters or the city or your elected officials. This is about having a real conversation, a true conversation, okay? And that's what's really important here. People don't want to tell stories. People just want to have a clear understanding how we're going to go about doing something long-term plan so that it doesn't happen again okay you know it's mind-boggling

▶ 18:18 Speaker 6: that we've added things on to this connections now that have finally caught up with us that's the way I look at it what is the next big project that may have an impact on somebody or anybody it could be you it could be me you know and

▶ 18:39 Speaker 6: I think, hopefully, by the time you get done talking about it and trying to figure things out and how to deal with the public, hopefully, you have something in place where, if a homeowner experiences something like that, it really ain't their fault, or it could be their fault, whatever way you want to put it, that we really have a plan. What is the plan of action? What is the real plan? Because I think Brazil Street was probably address from what I read from this report protocol okay I get it there's a protocol but what is the protocol when a residents have a backup into the homes

▶ 19:18 Speaker 6: into the toilets into the bathtub and ruins the living area where they cannot live it's inhalable it's a health issue what is the plan what the plan going to be and how long is it going to take I guess the Board of Aldermen Board of Health and whoever else to finally come together say you know what we got to do something here we have to execute this and we have to have a real plan because you don't have a plan maybe I'm wrong but just from what I've read what I've

▶ 19:59 Speaker 6: heard the way people talk about this it's almost I don't I don't want to say that people on their own because it's just my opinion but I feel like they

▶ 20:10 Speaker 6: have I really do and it's not a question of just call City Hall Gail Inferno's office our mayor okay it's a question of from the DPW the Health Department the Fire Department Public Safety everybody has to have a hand in this so you can go forward and solve it when you have people on different pages you will never fix your problem okay and if you try to keep it a

▶ 20:39 Speaker 6: secret tonight look at all the people here look

▶ 20:45 Speaker 6: at quietness that says it all I want to thank you for your time I want to thank you for having this meeting and hopefully people leave this meeting tonight and people that are watching will feel better about this whole situation because these homeowners it's cost them money there's no doubt in my mind okay and they shouldn't have to hire an attorney to get the money from the city okay the city needs to do what it needs to do and fix the problem address these homeowners and take care of what needs to be taken care of because leave them if you leave them high and dry which i'm not sure but i have my own opinion i think i'll keep it to myself right now i'll let the other folks that are going come to this mic and speak and they'll tell their stories of how they feel about this whole thing

▶ 21:40 Speaker 4: so thank you again thank you thank you hello everyone um so i want to make sure everyone you just state your name yeah record my name is cindy you and i live in beverly place 20 unit 27 and i want everyone to know what happened in brazil street it's not the first time happened in melrose in the past two years it actually happened to me last year in june 2018 the sewage back up to my household it was just not in a tornado fashion but it happened at 10 p.m at night on june 2nd giving the lack of communication from the city hall after sewage incident on the brazil street i got the same treatment following the sewage backup on Waverly Place a year ago. I'm wondering whether the affected households on the Brazil Street will have to wait for more than half a year to hear back anything from City Hall like what I did, knowing that they have to go through the extreme cold weather without any proper insulation on their walls throughout the winter. That's my first question. I'm wondering what happened to those brazil street household are they going to have to go through the same thing that i had to go through in 2018 the winter and 2019 winter and i hope you recall there's a multiple days they are extremely cold and my wall in the basement cannot keep the heat up i'm worrying the pipe will burst so my second question is given the fact that both sewage backup incident What happened in Brazil Street this year and what happened in Waverly Place on June 2018, they were both caused by the tremendous amount of grease blockage in crack pipes that have been neglected for years as I learned it from the report I got from City Hall. Will the City Hall continuously take this reactive approach, which only clear up the blockage when it's reported? When the sewage invades households, causing thousands of dollars of those residents, innocent residents, what's the plan going forward, like the previous public comment? What's the plan that can keep this happening again and again to further innocent residents in Melrose? So I'm here today looking for answers. I'm tired of hearing more questions.

▶ 24:50 Speaker 6: thank you thank you i want to sign in right yes please thank you hey my name is uh rick gresky i'm a resident of 23 brazil street for 37 years um i want to thank everybody here tonight for holding this meeting thank you to the public for coming down to put in their inputs special thanks

▶ 25:06 Speaker 6: to sean mcmaster and alderman Medeiros for holding the question and answer period to be held tonight for mike's worko coming up to the neighborhood in sean's absence he came right to my house and asked me about different things and we went to the neighbors and i appreciate all that that's a that's a real good thing to show but first and foremost in my mind comes the well-being and safety of the residents that homes were affected and i am hoping that the city before they okay these places to be lived in would get somebody from either the state or wherever the federal and environmental specialists that could go into these homes and check air quality bacteria quality whatever whatever diseases may be into what whatever might be in those homes my personal thing with these homes is they're all built on slabs now if you're tearing up floors how how much of that sewage penetrated into those slabs and how do you get it out of there i know we had servpro in there and everything but are these homes really fit to be lived in from what i hear from the neighbors the health inspector come in was less than a minute blessed it and out they went that's not the way to say okay this isn't a bleach and bucket cleanup this is really a serious serious matter I wouldn't want to put my family in one of

▶ 26:34 Speaker 6: those homes in fact I'd refuse to put him in my Avenue would have been different than what we're going through right now I would add a little different

▶ 26:47 Speaker 6: take on things I would also hope tonight that the city owns up and takes full responsibility and accountability from the mayor's office down to the DPW and anybody else that works for her that's involved in this for the DPW human error in this sore backup this was not an act of God this was not a natural disaster this was a sore blockage that was when high-pressure water was introduced by the DPW workers caused the backup and I know people will say this is the

▶ 27:26 Speaker 6: protocol all right but again you made a mistake and you have to own up to it you have to pay these people for their damages you have to get these houses fixed up I also want to know the city has not answered this question the DPW workers that were on site that day and I happen to be out I'm a retired guy so I'm out watching what's going on because I want to know what's going on and they were apologetic to the neighbors on Brazil Street that houses were affected and said they messed up now somehow within the period of time from that time happening to the time those guys get back to the barn and report it to their supervisors that story got oh no no no city's not responsible there was a blockage I want to hear the city answer why these DPW guys said they messed up nobody has come forward to take that responsibility I would hope the head of dpw has an answer for that tonight it's his guys i'm sure the protocol is written by management somehow somewhere and they're doing their job for for those guys to stand there and tell the neighbors we messed up we shouldn't have introduced this water that high that says a lot says a lot

▶ 28:40 Speaker 6: that the city's at fault i want to talk a little bit about the report that was written by uh who was it, Weston and Sampson.

▶ 28:50 Speaker 6: When all this happened, the city said they were going to get an independent audit on this pipe, sewer pipe and all this. What did they end up doing? They ended up hiring a firm that works for the city. They have contracts with the city. The cards were actually stacked in the city's favor because this firm is not going to say, oh the city of melrose messed up here because they want those contracts and the report if you read the report it says there was a blockage and they have pictures and everything the only thing that's missing into that report is what happens if you introduce high pressure water into something like that what would be the car what would be the results well we know what the results were when they did it okay that report is not an independent report the city should went out and hired a state engineer or somebody knows nothing about the source system in Melrose nothing about this issue come in and get a real independent report I want to talk a

▶ 29:55 Speaker 6: little bit about communication you know it come to light last week and the week before when Sean was on vacation that out of the mayor's office we were told not to talk to all the men alderman at large that the direction and communication should go right through the city hall to the mayor's office or who's ever in charge down there this is the reason we go to the polls in september and november to vote two people in we should be able to talk to anybody we want to this is a democracy this isn't a place where you hide your issues are they trying to hide something in the mayor's office sean was in touch with these people for the two weeks that he was on vacation mike's work goes in also had meetings with him Monica also did so for them to sit there and do it they must think we're stupid that we can't talk to people and bring up issues this is why we elected you officials and I would think that you know maybe somebody can explain that tonight how that communication got out but it's wrong my last thing and I'll let you go for the night I hope tonight with all this meeting and all these

▶ 31:07 Speaker 6: questions that we have an open and honest format tonight I hope everything comes to light I hope all the questions are answered honestly I hope nothing's trying to be swept under the rug I hope there's no finger pointing between the mayor's office the administration's all the superintendents you guys are all adults here let's get this taken care of let's get these people back in their homes the city of Melrose has to own up to this it's just it just keeps reminding of the merrimack valley columbia gas stepped forward and said yes we made a big mistake melrose step up to the plate now and say we made the mistake we're going to fix your homes and get these people some shelter that some of them don't even have tonight they're out of the hotels that's shame on us that's ridiculous considering that they didn't cause the backup so thank you again

▶ 32:10 Speaker 7: have a good night thank you okay hi my name is jenny infinity i'm from altamont ave i'm calling on the city to create a list listing the age of all the water and sewer pipes throughout the city by street and listed online so that every resident can know the uh state of their infrastructure on their street and better prepare we have been paying high sewer fees for over 30 years here and to find out that we have pipes that are over a century old is not acceptable as horrible as this is to have happened to brazil street i found out last tuesday monday that it also happened to well at waverly place tonight i now found out it happened at crescent ave each time the infrastructure has not been maintained and the city has not however reimbursed the homeowners they're blaming the homeowners and making them pay for the damages that's not acceptable we are paying for infrastructure to be maintained and it's not acceptable then to make the residents and homeowners pay for our not maintaining the infrastructure that's it good evening good evening

▶ 33:45 Speaker 6: i've been a resident of murray's my whole life 72 years could you just state your name for the

▶ 33:53 Speaker 8: record as well thank you excuse me could you just state your name for the record as well thank you

▶ 33:56 Speaker 6: robert d cargill thank you i was brought up on cargo street which is named after my grandparents my wife and i have lived here for 72 years and we have a home now with 31 fairfield there which is up off of park street miss venuti's father lives on that street across from me i want to tell you about a problem an ongoing problem that i've had with the sewers in front of my house i built the house in 1986 it's a two-family post and beam i've been a plumber for 50 years i did 31 years with the modern housing authorities that plumbing took care of 4 000 housing units 16 years after i lived in that house uh there was never a problem with the sewers for 16 years the city of melrose charged me eighteen hundred dollars when i built that house to make the sewer connection back then the dbw did that

▶ 35:02 Speaker 6: on uh approximately seven years ago in 2012 i may be off on the date our neighborhood north forest clarington berkeley fairfield avenue potter park street had their water mains replaced and the reason i'm telling you this this is the problem that we have with our city in the engineering department the contractor was from everett i worked two miles away from here in malden i'd come home for lunch i'd walk up the street and watch what was going on now every single water line and drain line is measured exactly and are in the engineering department on every street in the city that contractor was allowed to just rip through and rip off almost everybody's sewer line that goes into the sewer main for the only reason so that they could keep the job going and get done early and there was connections made which what they call band-aids to the old clay tile that goes into the clay eight inch pipes in the middle of the street i looked at that and i said they can't believe this that they're allowing that and the city had two student engineers sitting there taking notes nothing was ever said to them typically if you were working around a gas pipe or sewer you would carefully come up to where that pipe is supposed to be the labors get down there and dig it out and expose it so you don't destroy it don't destroy the tea that goes into the main now 16 years i had no problem with my sewer shortly after in 2017 after this work was done in the street and the street was paved in front of my house fortunately for me i'm a plumber i put clean outs outside my house on my branch going out to the street water started coming out of my stand pipes up at the ceiling in my laundry room i went out to the side wall unscrewed a four inch pvc cap thousands of gallons of sewage ran down into my yard down through the woods down to lebanon street fortunately for me that wasn't in my basement called the city up they came up they put the high pressure holes down there not once did anyone say well there's a problem in the street we took care of it and explained to me what happened okay so now we're up to uh 2019 may 13th water started coming out of the washing machine connection in my basement seven feet up in the ceiling where the standpipe is my apartment my tenants apartment the same thing now that's approximately four feet above grade where my house is so common sense would tell you that there's a problem out in the street that's building up and it's backing up into my lateral line high enough to make it come out of that stamp pipe called wayne's drain cost me five hundred dollars they wired out they said there no problem they felt something out near the main they couldn't be sure they ran out 100 feet which is kind of unusual that's how far the city made the connection it's actually like 130 feet from my house the next day i called wayne's drain and asked him to come out and camera the line at my expense from my house to the main they camera it made a recording they said well we think there's a problem where your line connects to the main okay wednesday may 22nd i went down

▶ 38:49 Speaker 6: to the city engineer's department to see the new engineer it was about eight o'clock in the morning secretary she said she wasn't in so i was standing there and she says oh here's two guys from the dpw i told them what was going on they said fine we'll go out and check up a few manhole come and see what's going on in behind me walks somebody on the engineering staff named rick very rude individual he walked up to me behind me and says oh you're the guy that's got the house has no furniture on the street well it cost me thirty thousand dollars to build 85 feet of street curbing and two catch basins to get a permit from the city to tie it into berkeley street instead putting it in front of my house for frontage I did that then this guy I says I don't think you understand mr. Warrington who was the head of the DPW at the time signed off on this I had engineering drawings elevations topos done and he said no I wanted to tie into Berkeley be better for the neighborhood I did that okay so recently so but before I could get home the two guys were up there the covers were off and they're looking at yeah there's some sand on the bottom of the drain there you know a couple inches of sand running a little slow in one of the manhole covers which was in front of a nudie's house and they said well we'll uh we'll send the truck out

▶ 40:28 Speaker 6: now that was on a wednesday on may 13th so the truck came up and that guy rick was there and i I had another problem with that individual the city sends out these big three-yard front end loaders to plow the hills and I'm so sorry we only have

▶ 40:41 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: about a minute left it would be wonderful all right we'd love for you to connect this also to my own street so we know what questions you would like us to

▶ 40:50 Speaker 6: ask a second time May 22nd I called the city told him I had popped to cover myself I asked him to come out and wire the drain shoot the high pressure down there again the two guys that went out to look at it with this guy Rick said we can't do it this afternoon which was on Wednesday they said they'd do it Thursday or Friday my wife and I left went to the White Mountains to the cottage on Memorial on Memorial Day the sewer backed up and I'll tell you what I did I sprayed the manhole two manhole covers of paint because I didn't believe they'd come out and do it and guess what they didn't come out because I sent my sun down there when i got a call on memorial day to look at this paint to see if the covers had been moved they didn't show up until 4 35 o'clock in the afternoon and i had 20 000 worth of damage with sewage in my apartment and the tenants had to leave and i'm still waiting to get another tenant in there and something has to be done i believe that the city can afford to have their own camera you have a situation on brazil street where before they put 1400 pounds of pressure down any clay tile line they can send a camera down there and have the supervisor of the dpw look at that instantly and say we can't approach it that way that's what should be done if wayne's drain can buy a 1400 two thousand dollar 100 foot camera the city can well afford and an average person

▶ 42:32 Speaker 6: and read what you're seeing and i don't appreciate people that work for the dpw looking at me like there's something wrong with what i'm asking them to do if they had come out blew that drain like they were supposed to i believe i wouldn't have had that twenty thousand dollars worth of damage

▶ 43:17 Speaker 5: done to my apartment thank you for your time thank you good evening my name is pete navarro resident of Ward 5 35 Crescent Ave I have three points I want to talk about tonight first off I just want to say to the residents of Brazil Street they're affected by this I stand in support of you as a resident of Ward 5 and your neighbor on Crescent Ave regardless of any of the politics that come out of this room tonight this community is behind you and if there's anything that I can personally do whether it's wash a load of clothes or swing a hammer please knocking my door I am certainly willing and able to lend a hand point number two I want to commend automatic master for his advocation of the constituents that he represents and also happens to be his neighbor as a resident of Ward five I feel secure to say that had this happened on my street or any other street in Ward five that automatic master would have respond in the same way that he was responding to his own neighbors on brazil street thank you for your dedication

▶ 44:23 Speaker 5: lastly i have major concerns on the immediate aftermath response of the administration regarding the communication as well as how we responded to the residents where was the compassion where why couldn't we say you know what it's going to be okay we'll take care of this why couldn't we look at compassion first instead of um in fighting

▶ 44:51 Speaker 5: the communication gap was very apparent and i was very concerned about the silence that alderman master expressed while trying to gain information that in my belief was accurately reported on by mike of the patch i would expect better coordination in preparation and how both we respond and communicate in small or large disasters this was only four houses imagine if it was all the houses on brazil street what would have been our response i can only imagine after reading the mayor's blog post from the other day she mentioned that this is a common occurrence that this happens regularly hearing from some of the residents it seems like it does yeah i can I'm here to tell you that in my professional life I have a national presence when I have people from Oregon Texas and Oklahoma sending me news articles about this and saying what is going on in your neighborhood I have to ask myself and say what is going on is this really that common of occurrence that it gets picked up nationally we need to take care and protect the residents of Melrose in times of need with compassion and respect not in fighting in silence i look forward to hearing more from this administration tonight and i thank alderman mcmaster alderman Medeiros

▶ 46:14 Speaker 4: for organizing this thank you my name is lloyd graves i came here because i feel

▶ 46:23 Speaker 4: very bad for our neighbors whose houses have been hit by the sewage predicament

▶ 46:31 Speaker 4: um i may be a kid but i also do have the right to speak here i mean i may not know much about law nor may i know every detail about this but what i do know is the city of melrose is not doing what everything they can what what i what i think should change is at least maybe they should maybe you should try to pay for the hotels along long enough for um the people to get their feet back so they don't have to spend half the money that they could be spending to fix their houses on on the on trying to stay in hotels so they

▶ 47:15 Speaker 4: have a place to live i also do think that they should that the city of melrose should have it where there isn't where it isn't where there's an independent company working to find out what happened I'm not saying that the people who like I'm pretty sure the DPW who checked if it was safe for them or not but I do feel like it should

▶ 47:47 Speaker 4: be independent an independent group to check if their houses are if it's even

▶ 47:59 Speaker 4: safe to live in them. I also think maybe they should, motorists should pay for part of it or at least for part of the fixing and maybe just part of it making sure the pipes are good and also maybe redoing the pipes and I also would like motorists to answer if they think that they've done enough to help them thank you thank you hello my name is Lloyd Gray that's

▶ 48:35 Speaker 1: my son you live at 72 Washington Street right around the corner from the Brazil corner of Brazil and Washington Street in a near identical house to these people that were affected all those houses were built about 1959 they were a prefab kit houses a pretty light construction I'm concerned about the people's well-being if they be given okay to come back into their houses but that's my son like I said I would be quite concerned if my house was flooded by sewage that there would be some after-effects the city says it's okay I would think the city should pay for an outside independent company to come in and check the air quality inside the house and clean make sure the house is ready to go so just a quick walk through I don't think it's sufficient just for your information those houses are built in a non-standard way they have two by reconstruction and they have plywood walls inside that are actually load-bearing walls. So if you just, I've seen Mr. Schumann, he's like apparently cut away the lower part of his plywood wall there. It's not like you can knock out the drywall and be back to the studs in those houses. So it's a little bit of a problem when you have soaked plywood with soaked with sewage. So that's one of the things. I'm also concerned about the infrastructure on the street. Obviously it's well over 100 years old. I feel like some some consideration should be given to replacing that line. I feel like the city's trying to blame the local butters on the street when they came in and pumped the line and knowing the line was well over 100 years old I felt they used a little bit excessive force. Maybe they should have said okay this is not working so maybe we should call in somebody else or use a different technique than just putting more pressure into the houses is those houses don't have any backflow preventers to keep the sewage from coming into the houses there's before code had any of that kind of thing so i just feel like the city made a mistake and should own up to it and in the meantime they should take care of the people that are there i feel like if we were in a more affluent area of of melrose bellevue for example we wouldn't be sitting here right now so the last time i was here was when they were wanting to put a weed store across the street from my house now i'm back for a sewage flood so that's the end of my end of my discussion thanks a lot thank you hello everyone um my name is eugene

▶ 51:52 Speaker 4: joe and i'm here to speak out for my sister-in-law kui hua chen who is one of the residents being impact by the brazil street sewage so sewage was happening on june 20th so in nearly one month we have not heard from anything about whether they're going to cover or not so our home insurance get back to us within second day since this is not covered so for me this is not normal to take nearly a month to get an answer from the city's insurance company And I just want to ask a question, whether this is cover or not. And I just want to give us some detail about our family background. My sister is a single mom with three kids, two of seven right here, and one five. After this has happened, she had to pack all her stuff, live in one of our relatives' house. but um she only has one spare bedroom for her so she has three kids squeezing one bedroom with no bed no mattress because all the bed and mattress has been thrown away so the kids is complaining

▶ 53:17 Speaker 4: about the back hurts every day because they were sleeping in the couch and she have no budget to put in front to buy a new mattress after all this happened because this is not in her plan

▶ 53:34 Speaker 4: so the so you know the CERN Pro did the initial cleanup that's cost about like eight thousand we don't have any money to put in front to pay everything in the city reimburse like the city told us at the very beginning so we we wait about like two weeks for the city to get us a clear answer that this has been covered

▶ 54:03 Speaker 4: and also after the initial cleanup there was going to be a deep cleaning the wall gonna have to rip off as you know this is a sewer water sewage water so the concrete have to do a deep cleaning it's gonna cost I'll say like over twenty

▶ 54:30 Speaker 4: thousand at least to get her life back and besides she have to buy all the furnitures, mattress, everything in front. She doesn't have that much money to put in front. This is, I believe like for most of the family, for this what happens, it's just out of our budget. And we don't have a clear answer, which city or city's insurance gonna cover this or not.

▶ 54:55 Speaker 4: And this is not a natural disaster. This is a human mistake. So we understand the DPW is doing their work, cleaning out the block, out from the pipes, but putting the sewage back flow, it's not their work.

▶ 55:15 Speaker 4: They made a mistake, they need to fix it, and we always tell our kids, you made a mistake, you fix it. Sorry, it's not enough. So as an adult, I just want everyone here to tell those kids, we as adults, we made a mistake. We have to fix it. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

▶ 56:10 Speaker 8: I'm Silvana Ortiz. I used to live at 12 Brazil Street.

▶ 56:19 Speaker 8: So obviously I was one of the houses that was affected in the incident. And I could sit here all day and complain about everything that we've been through. Our lives, mine and my husband's, my dog's, and my neighbor's, our lives have been completely uprooted. We don't have homes. We have nowhere to sleep. Yes, the city put us up in hotels for a while, but at the end of the day, it's not a home. um so yeah um i could talk about uh the lack of communication from the city in the beginning but i'm going to just focus on my main concerns and one of them is the health inspection like the inspection of the homes after um surfro came in so when this first happened um we were initially told that this was a level 3 contamination and that after 48 hours the sewage would become toxic so surf roll came in did their job and cleaned up and on June 28th the Board of Health the Director of Board of Health was going to be coming to the house to do her inspection I had met with the mayor and Jackie Bird the morning of and I had expressed my concerns because I had seen the director of board of health process her health inspection process the a few days prior to one of the other homes that was affected and it alarmed me at how quickly the inspection was done considering the level of sewage that was in our homes and the damage that that it ensued but they insured me that they said that she was great at her job she's been doing this for however many years years and they just trusted her. So I was there with the manager, the operations manager of Servpro and she came in, she looked around, poked her head in a few of the rooms and then said okay and walked out. Yes, I could have asked her questions and expressed my concerns about the fact that there was floor bubble bubbling by the HVAC system that clearly there's sewage and water trapped underneath but it's in plain sight you can see it so either it was something she didn't notice or didn't look at or didn't care about I don't I don't know and again I it's not my job it wasn't my response it's not my responsibility to make sure she's doing her job correctly and then there's also a big hole in our floor that evidently has sewage still trapped underneath it and again going back to what I said in the beginning surf road told us that if sewage sat in our house for more than 48 hours it would become toxic so currently there was still suit when the director of Board of Health was in the house there was still sewage in the house and she gave it the okay and there was a trash bag sitting covering this hole in the floor but it was still given the okay fit for occupancy which blows my mind so that's one main concern and I had to push back and just and I ended up emailing the director of Board of Health and the city to get it and re looked at and revisited because they said that they were never told but at the same time it's in plain sight you can see it and so that's a main concern of mine I I, there's no testing that was done, but the, the level of sewage and just, it, I, it just

▶ 1:00:06 Speaker 8: blows my mind. I don't understand how it wasn't, there are no tests done and it's, we're told it's a level three contamination and it's toxic. Um, so that's my first concern, main, major concern. And then the other one is obviously the city pipes. Um, yeah, I read the report. It does say that there's grease buildup and whatnot, but it's also alarming that the pipes were installed in 1906, and they're two inches too small, and they're old and cracked, and it's not the resident's responsibility to maintain the pipes. So, I mean, whose responsibility is it at the end of the day?

▶ 1:00:50 Speaker 8: And yeah, so that's really my story. That's all I have. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

▶ 1:01:26 Speaker 9: Hi, I'm Jordan Morose. All the years that I've come here every year talking about inflow and infiltration in Melrose, I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that you understood it was about infrastructure.

▶ 1:01:34 Speaker 9: It was about understanding what's under the ground, what needs to be maintained, what needs to be fixed. Obviously, we talk a lot about the monetary cost of 60% of our flow to the MWRA comes from groundwater because our pipes are, and I'll say it again, the leakiest pipes proportionately in the MWRA. We have the most water infiltrating our pipes compared to the miles of sewer and the size of the pipes than any other community in the entire MWRA. It's been that way or on the verge of the leakiest pipes for quite a while. Nobody here has chosen to do anything about it. This is a consequence of that. If we had looked in the pipes, if we had started the I&I work at an accelerated pace years ago, we would have eventually come across that that pipe had spiral fractures, that there's bad joints there, that roots penetrated the pipe. in my experience grease build up like you see in those pictures comes from stagnant

▶ 1:02:46 Speaker 9: flow, there is grease that goes through every pipe it's not the residents putting grease in the pipes right, what you put from your body into the toilet has grease in it there are body oils when you take a shower all these things go through when the flow stagnates they collect together stick together, stick to things there clearly there were roots in the pipe slowing things down there might have been other issues as well who knows what the um

▶ 1:03:17 Speaker 9: that whole glob of everything has in it right don't look for scapegoats in this other than literally your city administration and you as a board of alderman i'm being blunt but i'm being

▶ 1:03:29 Speaker 9: honest you stick your head in the sand every year here when it's time to talk about inflow and infiltration about the infrastructure of the water and sewer. You accumulate millions of dollars in reserves and somehow are proud of it that you have money sitting there doing nothing when we have a failing sewer system. The buck stops here. You haven't made the decision. Unanimously every year, maybe a couple of years exception, you all vote to just do the minimal amount. It's not about a 1906 pipe that you're blaming. you should be blaming yourself or yourselves or this board or the mayor's office for not understanding that you've got to look at 1906 pipes and see after this many years are they still operating the way they should be. And it's not about a pipe that's two inches too small because pipes that are two inches too small according to modern standards have done the job for generations of people living here. The factors are that we have to invest in inflow and infiltration issues in our city And by doing that, we will find these issues. We will stop the stagnant flow, and we will let water flow from here into the MWRA all the way.

▶ 1:04:49 Speaker 9: You know, I'm surprised at the city's response to the liability issues here. It was only a couple years ago, I remember at a meeting here when we were talking about water and sewer enterprise funds and how much money were used in indirect costs. And the city solicitor was here, sitting here telling you, oh, well, you know, water and sewer has to pay a lot of our liability insurance policy because we have these failures all over the city of sewer backups, and we have to cover them, pay for them, and we do that all the time. That was his justification, maybe rationalization, who knows, as to why the sewer enterprise fund and the water enterprise fund had to take a huge burden of liability costs. If that was so routine, why are we here now? I don't understand that why doesn't the city respond if it's not well documented if we don't already know what our insurance covers and doesn't cover and we're sitting here a month later trying to figure that out maybe you aren't I don't know but it doesn't seem like anybody's expressed what it is it doesn't seem like something's happening properly here every year the pipes are in the

▶ 1:06:01 Speaker 9: ground they don't get any younger they don't get any less cracked they don't get any roots receding from them that are growing into the foot through the cracks in the openings in the pipes every year we don't do something about it it's not a surprise that this happens what you know Western Samson is a good engineering

▶ 1:06:24 Speaker 9: firm but I agree with other speakers here they certainly aren't independent in this case there are major contractor doing the design of the the limited amount of I&I work we're doing and what struck me in the report that Western Sampson wrote, was what was missing from that report. There wasn't a timeline of what happened and when. There wasn't a timeline of what did the city do, what manhole covers did they prop, what did they look, did they inspect anything first? There isn't a listing of what flow rates and pressures did they use to put into the pipe. I found it curious that they gave a little theoretical presentation about the velocity of sewage flowing in a pipe that's been released. but I found that curious because especially there was no not to get technical here but in the static situation before anything was flowing we knew that there wasn't this infiltration this explosion into the houses. We know that it came from the city. It wasn't from a sudden and I've got to qualify my statements here that I didn't examine the situation so I don't know everything about it but from what I can see on the surface and have heard it wasn't that this plug was suddenly released and water flowed downstream at a velocity and flooded houses further down it doesn't sound like what happened to me somebody can correct me if I'm mistaken about that the Western and Samson report didn't look at the management failures it said people followed protocols it didn't identify what the protocols were why would a report that's looking into the the failure of a system not look into what the protocols were, list them, show what protocols were followed in which way, and then let's figure out what's wrong with the protocols. Should the protocol always say, pop a cover, put a video camera down there, look at it first. Pop a cover above and below, see where your problem is. Go at the clog from the bottom side instead of the top side. You know, none of that's in the Western Samson Report, which I find really curious. I think that they have the capacity to do that kind of analysis. I don't think you need a separate management consulting firm to understand those issues.

▶ 1:08:40 Speaker 9: But my cynical, I've developed a lot of cynicism here over the years. And the cynical presentation is, and I've seen this before in plenty of presentations in front of this board, that somehow there's a pre-coached idea about what that report says. I don't want to impugn the integrity of Weston and Sampson, but I've seen plenty of consultants come in here before and say exactly what the mayor's office So the DPW head wants them to say to you, instead of giving you the complete and accurate picture of what is actually occurring here. The misrepresentations made regarding financial situations, the misrepresentations made regarding, you know, the rate structure for the water and sewer enterprise funds. There's been a lot of misrepresentations, and you've all willingly accepted them. I've been here for years saying, but look at the facts. I've presented facts to you here, but what do you do? You go ahead and vote for what the mayor wants to do, and what do we end up with? We end up with situations like Brazil Street. Brazil Street is not a failure of the individual men that were out there doing something. Yes, humans make mistakes. That's why you have protocols. You try to have the protocols so mistakes aren't made. You have protocols in place in case a mistake is made, and it mitigates the damage of that mistake. Those are the failures here. They're administrative failures that we have here. It's really unfortunate that we have people whose lives are turned upside down, and even if they were turned upside down, that we haven't actually stepped up as a city and said, we're going to take care of you, and even if we have to figure it out later, we'll figure it out later. I'm embarrassed to be from Melrose and to know that we as a city are doing this harm to people

▶ 1:10:29 Speaker 9: who are our neighbors and friends um that's all i'll say tonight i will certainly say more in the future about inflow and infiltration issues getting our water and sewer system up to snuff and accelerating that this isn't the game these you know people's lives rely on these systems and when games are played and we hoard money because the city wants to hoard money for something instead of charging the residents ridiculous rates for water and sewer the third highest rates in MWRA you know there's something wrong here we

▶ 1:11:00 Speaker 9: have you have the money you're refusing to spend it you know there's an issue you stick your head in the sand and accept it oh we don't have to do anything about it I'm done thank you thank you anyone else wishing to speak

▶ 1:11:32 Peter D. Mortimer: tonight motion of closed public comment madam chair second the motion of closed

▶ 1:11:35 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: public comment made by Alderman Mortimer and seconded by Alderman Boisselle all in favor aye aye any opposed that concludes our public comment period thank you for coming out and sharing your thoughts and ideas with us I will now turn to our