UPDATE: Boston Police identify the body as male.
The Boston Fire Department reports a body was discovered around 9 a.m. where Boylston Street crosses the river. The body was in bad enough shape the gender could not be immediately determined.
On Boston Reddit, ChickenWhiskers describes finding the body:
Shortly after 11:30 a.m. just upstream from where Boylston Street crosses it. Homicide detectives are investigating, as they do with all unexplained deaths.
A construction company working on the Muddy River reclamation project plans to set off a series of explosions along the river next week to help test the strength of pilings and other underground structures, the state alerts us.
These tests sound very much like cannon blasts or very loud gunshots.
Lovely. But try not to be too alarmed if you hear explosions between 9:30 and 11 a.m. on Tuesday or 1 and 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Four blasts are scheduled for each time period.
H/t Ron Newman.
Flamey Fens. Photo by Jonathan Berk.
For the second time in less than a week, the Fens behind the Boston Fire Department fire-alarm center caught fire, shortly after 7:15 p.m. today. As with the last fire, firefighters made quick work of the flaming reeds, although unlike last time, firefighters didn't find somebody floating in the water past the reeds. However, the department did call in its arson investigators to help figure out what caused the fire.
Fire closer up. Photo by Masstreehugger.
Meanwhile, BFD spokesman Steve MacDonald reports the man pulled out of the water after the Saturday fire has died. Both the cause of his death and the fire remain under investigation.
Work officially began today on a project to restore the Muddy River to something closer to what Olmsted might recognize - and to reduce the odds of another devastating flood along the normally placid series of brooks and ponds at the heart of the Emerald Necklace.
Officials said the first phase of the project, which will last three years and cost $31 million, will involve dredging current channels, replacing some culverts with larger pipes or opening them back up as streams and moving some nearby roads.
Masstreehugger took this video: "From my window looking west toward the Muddy River/Back Bay Fens Victory Gardens. The fire here is burning past the Fire Dept Communications Hdqrtrs parking lot, the wind blowing it down stream toward Boylston St."
What turned out to be a two-alarm fire on both sides of the Muddy River was reported around 3 p.m., the Boston Fire Department reports.
Smoke from the fire, which rapidly jumped from brush to trees, could be seen as far away as Hingham.
Firefighters say the Fens is one of three areas in Boston primed for brush fires following our snowless winter. The area along the Neponset had a brush fire last month; Stony Brook Reservation on the Hyde Park/Roslindale line has yet to have one.
Fenway fire from Hingham. Photo by Michael Page.
Nowadays, Charlesgate mostly brings to mind the crumbling ramp system connecting Storrow Drive and the roads of the Fenway - its underside a transient homeless camp next to a mucky "pond."
But once it was a bucolic connection between the Muddy and the Charles rivers, part of Olmsted's creative plan for both creating a key part of the Emerald Necklace and flushing out the Muddy.
Compare the above photo, from the Library of Congress's collection, and taken sometime between 1890 and 1901, to this Google Street View. The only thing the two have in common is the still standing residential building.
Some people want to tear down the Bowker overpass, built in 1967, and restore Charlesgate to its Olmstedian ideal.
Photo by BFD.
A Brookline cab driver who lost control exiting Storrow Drive at Park Drive wound up in the Muddy River this morning, the Boston Fire Department reports.
The cabbie got himself out of his vehicle OK; a tow truck and a hazmat crew responded to remove the cab and clean up anything it might have left behind.
Mike Mennonno, who has a plot in the nearby Fenway Victory Gardens, explains.
Ladybug's Leaf looked down from a bridge over the Muddy River in the Back Bay Fens yesterday and spotted a pair of fish.
The Globe reports officials are investigating and trying to contain an oily spill in the little river that apparently came from somewhere on the Brookline side.
In 2008, you may recall, several thousand gallons of fuel oil spilled in Brighton wound up in the Muddy River.
The MBTA provides this photo of the temporary dams now in place at the Fenway portal where the Riverside line goes underground. The T had been running Riverside service this morning after the Muddy River receded below flood stage, but it's back above it again and there's no service between Fenway and Kenmore.
MORNING UPDATE: The Muddy River dropped below flood stage, even if barely, so Riverside service is running this morning - although river levels have started rising again (hourly river-level data).
LATER MORNING UPDATE: The Muddy River got all floody again, so the T put the dam back and stopped Riverside service.
Around 9 p.m., the MBTA blocked off the Fenway portal used by the Riverside line to prevent a recurrence of the 1996 floods that left Kenmore station submerged in 20 feet of water and required $40 million in repairs.
The move means Riverside commuters can expect delays tomorrow as they ride shuttle buses instead of trolleys between Reservoir and Kenmore, the T advises.
A federal monitoring station on the Muddy reported the normally docile river reached flood stage around 8:45 p.m. A T alert announcing the suspension of service between Kenmore and Reservoir went out not long after.
The start of the Riverway this afternoon, along the floody Muddy near Park Drive, where a BWSC crew was trying to unclog a pipe that brings the river under the road to the Fens.
Upstream, on the Brookline side of the Big Muddy:
USGS data show the Muddy's almost at flood stage (that thin red line at the very top of the chart):
Tbobtubb photographed flooding downstream along the Fens.
Jef Taylor shows us the dramatically different views you get at that intersection just by turning one way or the other.
Brookline officials want well intentioned people to stop trying to scoop up oily birds from the Muddy River following yesterday's bizarre oil spill, because most people don't really have a clue how to get oil off a duck's back.
The Tab reports that up to 5,000 gallons of mineral oil that leaked out of an electrical conduit at Sutherland and Strathmore roads in Brighton this morning got into a drainage pipe that then dumped it into Leverett Pond and the Muddy River on the other side of Brookline on the Jamaica Plain line.
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