Never fear: the slides are here!
On Wednesday, January 22, a capacity crowd filled the multi-purpose room at Acton’s Senior Center to hear Alison Field-Juma, the Executive Director of OARS, describe the first-ever “report card” on the health of the Assabet, Sudbury, and Concord river system.
Alison first described the process by which stakeholders brainstormed about what attributes of the rivers to study and what metrics to apply, using a methodology developed by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. She then gave an overview of the entire watershed, touching on each of the studied attributes of water quality, streamflow, scenery, habitat, and recreation. Finally, she focused in on the lower Assabet, the river section that flows through Acton. Alison’s richly illustrated slide deck is here (warning: large file):
The Town of Acton came out looking good, garnering praise for supporting OARS’ water quality monitoring program and water chestnut removal team, for building a water treatment plant that discharges into infiltration basins rather than directly into the river, and for building the Acton section of the Assabet River Blue & Green Trail.
The talk was structured with several opportunities for audience questions. Some snippets of the Q & A follow:
Q: Did you get grant funding for this study?
A: Yes. Funding came from the Massachusetts Environmental Trust, a grant program funded by those of you who have the whale tail or leaping brook trout on your license plate. Additional support came from the Sudbury Foundation, the Cedar Tree Foundation, and the National Park Service.
Q: How much responsibility do the EPA [federal Environmental Protection Agency] and MassDEP [Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection] take for water quality analysis? Lab costs can be so expensive.
A: EPA does sampling around the Superfund sites. Funding for MassDEP has been cut back. They weren’t doing enough sampling of our rivers, so OARS started its own program. Just this past year, MassDEP has gotten to the point at which they are using data from sources other than their own staff, including data from OARS. Mass Wildlife [Division of Fisheries and Wildlife] is another source of data; OARS uses Mass Wildlife data on fish.
Q: Do bacteria really tell us if the river is healthy?
A: Bacteria don’t live long in the water. Bacteria [of the type measured for water quality] are an indicator of the presence of human waste. But because they are so short lived, measuring their presence is a complicated task. You can take a sample in the morning and another sample later in the day, and they will be quite different. There are particular spots, where people use the river a lot, from which bacteria measurements can be valuable. OARS’ long-term goal is to make our rivers swimmable, and bacteria measurements are steps toward that goal.
Q: What are the main sources of bacteria and other contaminants in the river water?
A: For bacteria, the sources are animal poop from runoff, and septic system flooding during heavy rains. We get a lot of chemicals, including pharmaceuticals, from the waste treatment plants.
Q: Why doesn’t OARS do more sampling for bacteria?
A: OARS began sampling and analyzing for bacteria in 2019, with volunteers doing weekly sampling. This was possible because MassDEP began a grant program to expand the spatial coverage of bacteria data by involving qualified non-government groups like OARS in data collection.
Q: Our rivers have a lot of dams; do you have comments on dams?
A: Dams break up connectivity for aquatic life, including migratory fish. On our rivers, the flowing stretches are pretty healthy, but the pond sections tend to be less healthy. The pond sections have more cyanobacteria [blue-green algae], from nutrients and heat. Cyanobacteria blooms are toxic: unsafe for dogs to drink, and humans can get a rash.
Q: Can cattails cleanse the water?
A: Yes, of sewage, but not mercury. Mercury has to be “caught” before it gets into the water. Massachusetts has stopped incinerating mercury and stopped mercury in dental use, but there is still mercury in the sediments from the Nyanza Plant and from coal-fired power plants in the Midwest.
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If this all seems intriguing, Alison will give another rendition of her SuAsCo report card talk, with a focus on the Concord River, at the Middlesex Canal Museum in Billerica on Sunday, February 9, at 1pm.
After this post was published, Alison let me know that the Town of Acton also financially supports OARS’ Rapid Response team that controls invasive water chestnut in the Acton section of the Assabet River (as well as the water quality monitoring program). This additional insight has been added to the text of the post.
I just came across a succinct summary of “Environmental Literacy for the Assabet, Sudbury and Concord Rivers” at: https://ian.umces.edu/blog/2018/03/19/environmental-literacy-for-the-assabet-sudbury-and-concord-rivers/.
This was assembled by the group at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science who developed the river/estuary report card system, and would be a good introduction to the natural and human history of the watershed for a person looking for a wide-ranging but well-documented overview.
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