LMA—Muddy River restoration work, including the “daylighting” of a buried section of river under the Sears Rotary, will begin around Oct. 1, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Corps last month announced that it has awarded a nearly $31 million construction contract to Charter Environmental of Boston to perform the work.
The three-year first phase of the project will have significant traffic impacts on the Longwood Medical Area. It will include installing some new culverts and dredging much of the river in the Riverway parkland, as well as redesigning roadways around intersection of the Riverway, Brookline Avenue and Park Drive.
The work will remove the Park Drive “jug-handle” turnaround as well.
Any street closures for the work will happen at night, according to Mike Keegan, the project manager for the Army Corps.
The project is intended to reduce flooding that has plagued the silted-up river and clean up pollution and invasive plant species.
The Boston Parks and Recreation Department is “extremely pleased” that work will begin more than a decade after a study it commissioned approved of the project, according to spokesperson Jacque Goddard. The project will “help tremendously with flood control and environmental restoration,” she said.
A future phase of the project will cover the Jamaica Plain end of the river, which runs between Jamaica Pond and the Charles River. Design work on that phase will begin shortly and take about two years to plan, Keegan said.