Milton Police Station Upgrades

Unquity Brook in Milton is one of the watershed’s dirtiest streams and was a catalyst for the NepRWA Hotspot Program.

Several years ago, we studied the impacts of stormwater pollution on Unquity Brook, an important stream for smelt spawning, and found that one of the most polluted sites was directly behind the Milton Police Station, right next to the brook’s headwaters.

To help clean up Unquity Brook, the Milton Police Station was retrofitted with stormwater green infrastructure (BMPs) to improve water quality and to protect one of the last remaining spawning grounds for rainbow smelt in Boston Harbor. NepRWA helped Milton to plan and to secure Coastal Zone Management (CZM) grant funding for the project through the Coastal Pollution Remediation (CPR) Program. The project consisted of:

• A small bioretention cell was constructed near the entrance of the police station to collect runoff from the front parking lot area.
• A water quality swale and infiltration basin that now collects the remainder of the parking area runoff.
• The station’s dumpster moved away from the stream bank and fenced to stop trash from being blown into the brook.

We hope that these improvements will result in better water quality for the brook.