Hey, there! Log in / Register
Why not allow swimming in the Brookline Reservoir?
By adamg on Fri, 09/14/2012 - 7:44am
Beth Jones makes the case to bring public swimming back to the reservoir off Rte. 9 - which hasn't actually been used as a reservoir since the mid-1800s.
Neighborhoods:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Its a good idea that will
Its a good idea that will probably not happen.
#1 Reason: The neighborhood would not want the extra cars and people.
If not swimming, I do like the idea of using it for high school rowing, that is low impact and should not disrupt the neighborhood too much.
Also, I can not begin to imagine what is at the bottom of that thing after 160 years. It must need some serious cleaning.
And that's why Brookline is completely awful
"Wahhh, I hate people." Then don't live near water, (expletive.)
Seriously, I wish Brookline had resident stickers for their cars. That way, we could put up tollbooths and make 'em pay five bucks a pop to drive into Boston. See? Boston can exclude people they don't like too.
Brookline Reservoir, Chestnut Hill Reservoir
Not to pooh-pooh the idea (I've wondered the same thing - and came to the same conclusion - that the nearby neighbors would expend much of their considerable resources to kill the idea), but doesn't that body still have a "pressure enhancing" function for the emergency water supply (especially since the small reservoir that was at the top of Fisher Hill on Fisher Ave. is now without water)?
On a totally unrelated note I saw some kind of floating, manned apparatus (that looked nothing like a boat) in the Chestnut Hill Reservoir this morning - anyone know what that is? Some kind of cleaning apparatus?
Insurance nightmare
Buying a policy to cover the town in the event someone drowns in the town-sanctioned swimming hole has got to be super expensive.
Insurance doesn't seem to be a problem for Arlington and Medford
both of which have outdoor swimming in town-owned ponds, and both of which are considerably less wealthy than Brookline.
IDK
There might be a bunch of reasons why - depth of the ponds, town budgets, new policy vs existing policies or no insurance, lifeguard situation, etc. Maybe Brookline could get a policy no problem, I don't know, I'm just speculating.
Houghton's Pond North
The Wealthy Townsmen wouldn't dare turn their tidy park and reservoir, which used to have it's own fair share of rapes in the late 1970's if I recall, into a place where non-Brookliners (RE - Black and Hispanic People from the Bury and JP) could bathe.
The response from the town of course will be parking. Not enough parking. It is the same idea as public access to beaches on the South Shore and Cape. You can come, but of course leave your car miles away.
John, when I was a kid in J.P.
the Brookline cops didn't appreciate the white kids coming over from Boston/JP either. They always gave us a hard time when we trekked over to Cleveland Circle to use the pool.
There's a difference between
There's a difference between swimming contests and having a public beach. There are two 20-foot holes in Brookline Reservoir, and the whole thing is depressed inside a granite wall. The shore would have to be entirely re-graded, which in places is impossible, given the footprint of the property. At best, you could rope off a very small area for swimming, which wouldn't be worth the cost. And that would be after the neighbors spent a few hundred thousand dollars fighting it.
A carnival, like they had in the past at B.R. and at Jamaica Pond, would be a great idea. Even that sort of once-per-year event would be fought at all cost by preservationists and the neighbors. "Community involvement" has made a lot of good things impossible these days.
While there's no public
While there's no public outdoor swimming area in Brookline, the DCR's Reilly Pool is just a block across the border in Cleveland Circle.
If they prohibit people like me who live outside Brookline, as the article proposes, I don't really care what they do with the reservoir one way or the other, as long as my tax money doesn't pay for it.