BOSTON (WHDH) – The City of Boston has received a state permit vital to its efforts to restore addiction recovery services on Long Island in Boston Harbor.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced on Thursday that a Chapter 91 License had been granted by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), allowing for the reconstruction of the Long Island Bridge.
The bridge’s reconstruction, a project Wu’s administration hopes to complete within four years, is one of several hurdles the city faced as it looks to restore a 35-acre campus on the island that would provide long-term addiction treatment services and housing to those in need.
The bridge once connected the Boston-owned island with Quincy and was closed in 2014 due to safety reasons, ending access to the island where transitional housing and drug addiction treatment programs were offered.
With a new permit to rebuild the structure, Wu said the city was ready to move ahead.
“This is about people and the opportunity for an island to really unlock the pathways to recovery, stabilization, workforce development, community and so much more,” the mayor said during an announcement event Thursday morning.
The awarding of the permit came just over a week after Wu called attention to criminal activity and violence occurring in the area of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, or Mass and Cass. At the time, she described the situation at the intersection as reaching a breaking point.
“With additional drug activity, human trafficking and violence, the number of emergency calls have gone up significantly,” Wu said on Wednesday, July 2. “The workers who’ve been out there day after day after day, are not feeling comfortable and like they can safely be there anymore.”
Wu called for state assistance for Mass and Cass earlier in the year, requesting support for the those who were living on the streets, experiencing homelessness as well as opioid addiction.
In a news release on Thursday, the mayor’s office said that with $81 million available via the city’s capital budget, Boston would “accelerate progress on construction immediately.”
Additional steps now needed to begin work on the bridge include a “federal consistency review” by the state’s Office of Coastal Zone Management and a bridge permit from the United States Coast Guard.
Wu’s office said the USCG previously “issued favorable preliminary determinations on the navigational and historic preservation elements of the City’s bridge design.”
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