After years of stormwater runoff and waves eroding the beach at Crystal Lake in Newton Centre, the City of Newton will install a new drainage system to prevent future damage, per a vote by the Newton Conservation Commission on Thursday.
In a presentation about the project, Newton Chief Environmental Planner Jennifer Steel said that the driveway at Crystal Lake had been eroded by stormwater runoff and was shedding asphalt onto the sand.
“There’s old, falling-apart asphalt here that has really just sort of been breaking off the edge of the access driveway,” Steel said.
This was because the existing drainage system was not large enough to accommodate all the runoff from the beach’s driveway, especially in storms that create more than one inch of rain, Steel said.
“It has not been maintained, but it is also too narrow to really capture water that’s coming down, quite a clip from this steep parking lot and a relatively steep driveway,” Steel said.
A wider drain will mitigate the possibility of erosion in the future, according to Steel.
“It’s going to be replaced with a brand-new wider trench drain, so that water won’t be able to jump over it so easily,” Steel said.
This process will require the city to remove the asphalt over the current drain and install a wider drain and a new infiltration system underground. Newton will also install boulders and granite to form a curb at the end of the driveway so that the material is not so easily eroded by water.
Waves from the lake have also eroded almost a foot of sand near a stone retaining wall between the beach and open lawn area at Crystal Lake, leaving the wall almost floating above the sand where it used to be buried.
“There’s just nothing supporting the base of this wall,” Steel said. “The wall is literally just hanging off of the boulders above. There’s nothing supporting the footings.”
While the new drainage system will help prevent further erosion, the city also plans to reinforce the wall’s structure to counteract the existing damage.
“This will be filled and patched with mortar to ensure that there is some sort of a proper footing for this wall so that it can be made to stand for some years to come,” Steel said.
These fixes are only temporary until Crystal Lake Beach sees a more “extensive renovation in the future,” according to the project proposal.
Luis Perez Demorizi, Newton’s director of Parks and Open Space, said he was looking forward to completing the project.
“We are going to be doing this in-house with DPW and utilities, so it’ll be a fun project for us to take on,” Perez Demorizi said.
While the Commission didn’t set a specific deadline for the project, Demorizi said the improvements must be completed before the city installs docks in the water on May 27.
The Commission voted unanimously to approve the improvements.
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