Pete Sanborn
Tufts Public Relations  
617-627-3824 
 

Grace Perez
Mystic River Watershed Assoc.
781-316-3438
 

Tufts -- MRWA Pledges Partnership To Clean Mystic River
University, Watershed Association To Make River ‘Fishable, Swimmable’
 

MEDFORD, Mass. -- The same river made famous by the song that described the holiday sleighride through the woods to grandmother’s house is now infamous for its contamination. Its banks have two Superfund sites, dozens of brownfields, and a host of illegal sewage connections.
     Now, a team led by Tufts University and the Mystic River Watershed Association (MRWA) have formed the Mystic River Collaborative, aiming to make the Mystic “swimmable and fishable” by 2010. The project has added support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Massachusetts Office of Environmental Affairs (EOEA) and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.
     The Mystic River Watershed encompasses 76 square miles, half a million people and 21 communities. It extends from the headwaters of the Aberjona River in Reading to the heavily urban and industrial communities bordering Boston Harbor.
     “Tufts University is committed to restoring this once pristine waterway both for the environmental health of the river and for the community to enjoy,” said Dr. John DiBiaggio, president of Tufts University.
      “The Mystic River Watershed has historically been on the back burner of public and governmental attention,” said Grace Perez, MRWA’s executive director. “This collaborative turns up the heat and both educates the public and focuses available resources on restoring this beleaguered river.”
      To reach its “fishable and swimmable” target, Tufts faculty and student researchers will focus on the priorities identified by the community: cleaning contaminated sites, restoring ecosystems, redirecting rainwater back into the ground instead of into storm drains and disconnecting illegal sewage connections. 
      “Our first steps are to understand and then stop the sources of pollution to the river,” said Paul Kirshen, Tufts research professor of civil and environmental engineering. “Part of the communities’ vision here includes new beaches, greenways along the river, marinas and even water shuttles into Boston. We are working to support that.” More than 100 Tufts students are working on projects to restore the Mystic this year, and on April 8 Tufts and the MRWA will co-host a conference on rehabilitating the river.
      In 1998 the EPA and EOEA began working together to force communities in the lower Mystic to identify and fix outfall pipes along the river that discharge pollutants. As a result, they directed towns to learn how the pollution enters the pipes and to correct it.
The EPA says they used a similar strategy in tackling pollution problems in the Charles River, which resulted in the discovery of numerous illicit sewer connections there. Now, more than one million gallons of contaminated flow is eliminated there each day.
     “EPA fully supports this cutting-edge collaboration between Tufts and the watershed association to restore this important urban waterway,” said Mindy S. Lubber, regional administrator at EPA’s New England Office. “Enforcing and overseeing the discovery and removal of illicit sewer connections will be a top priority for us in the months ahead. We’ll also continue to work closely with community groups who have a major interest in seeing how the river and areas along the river are cleaned up and restored.”
     Additionally, in 1998, EOEA awarded a two-year $50,000 capacity building grant to the MRWA allowing the MRWA to hire a full-time director and consolidate planning and advocacy efforts in the watershed, leading to this partnership with Tufts University. This year, the MRWA received a water quality monitoring grant to develop citizen volunteer water quality monitors.
     Across the state, EOEA doubled the capital allocation for watershed priority projects identified by 27 watershed teams from $2,000,000 to $4,000,000. These funds support locally based activities to help communities address the water quality and other issues in their watersheds. EOEA’s Watershed Initiative is nationally recognized by the University of Wisconsin as being one of the best in the United States.
      “The health of our environment is directly tied to the health of our water resources. That is why, as a state senator, I authored and fought for seven years to pass the Rivers Protection Act,” said Secretary Robert Durand. “At Environmental Affairs, I’ve strengthened the Watershed Initiative by doubling the funding for local projects and making sure we have watershed team leaders on the ground in our communities.” 

The goals of this collaborative will be outlined in a news conference:
When: 11:30 am, Tuesday, March 28
Where: Blessing of the Bay Boathouse, 32 Shore Drive, Somerville
For more information call:  Christen Graham, Tufts University, 617-627-5906
                                             Grace Perez, MRWA, 781-316-3438