MyRWA's Katrina Sukola discusses herring in the Mystic.Over 60 people battled the cold to attend the January 24th Mystic River Water Quality Forum held at EPA’s Boston office. The presenters, largely scientists and municipal staff, presented on a variety of topics including stormwater permits, municipal projects to improve water quality, starting a volunteer stormwater monitoring team, cyanobacteria, historic chloride levels, and herring migration and habitat.
MyRWA scientist Patrick Herron presented State of the Mystic - Water Quality and Environmental Conditions. Patrick demonstrated how the EPA Mystic River grade is calculated each year and provided details on bacterial and phosphorus levels. He also correlated water chestnut and water lily growth in the Mystic to the added nutrient load.
Katrina Sukola, MyRWA scientist, dove into local fisheries and provided an overview of the 2012 Herring Monitoring Program. In the first year of this program, over 80 volunteers counted upwards of 21,000 fish for an estimated 198,932 2012 Mystic River herring run. Katrina also presented data collected through MyRWA’s Herring Habitat Assessment.
The event underlined the high level of data being collected by various parties in the Mystic River Watershed as well as the collaborations and efforts underway to make improvements.
