The 2019 Water Quality Report Card for the Mystic River watershed was unveiled during a webinar on August 13 featuring many of the state, local, and federal partners engaged in protecting water quality. The report continues to show that water quality in the Mystic River and Mystic Lakes is clean--earning “A” water quality grades year after year.
“It is great that the report card shines a light on all the work that agencies, towns and cities are doing to improve water quality on the river,” said Patrick Herron, Executive Director for the Mystic River Watershed Association. “It is also an opportunity to shine a light on the great assets the rivers, lakes and tributaries are for area residents to enjoy.”
The webinar featured Dennis Deziel, Region 1 Administrator for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Martin Suuberg, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP), Fred Laskey, Executive Director, Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), Senator Patricia Jehlen, Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria, City Manaager of Chelsea , Tom Ambrosino, as well as Andy Hrycyna, Watershed Scientist and Patrick Herron, Executive Director of the Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA).
Highlighted in the webinar was the story of the improving grade at Island End River--which has gone from consistently earning a “D” or lower to this year’s grade of “B” thanks to repairs made to sewage infrastructure in Chelsea that are now preventing wastewater flowing into the river. Tom Ambrosino, City Manager of Chelsea, highlighted the importance of the Island End area to regional climate resilience. The City is now turning their attention to making major improvements to Mill Creek.
"Our ability to draw on 20 years of data from our program and from MWRA gives us the ability to track changes over time, and to tell nuanced, local success stories,” said Andy Hrycyna, Watershed Scientist at MyRWA. “The Island End River data vividly shows the impact that infrastructure improvements can make on water quality."
“It was so good to hear about the improvements along Island End and see that government can make people’s lives better,” said Senator Jehlen.
Since 2014, the EPA has assigned grades to 14 separate water bodies based on levels of bacteria contamination in the Mystic watershed. Bacteria are introduced into the watershed by raw sewage, which reaches waterways via leaking pipes, illicit connections, and combined sewer overflows. Much of the field sampling work is done by a cohort of volunteers from the Mystic River Watershed Association who sample at 15 locations throughout the year, as well as data provided by MWRA.
“We are incredibly fortunate to have such a clean urban river as part of the Boston Harbor watershed,” said EPA Regional Administrator Dennis Deziel. “We continue to see natural resources such as the Mystic River serve as a driver for further environmental improvements and smart development in dense, urban areas.”
The speakers all emphasized the importance of partnerships between agencies, towns/cities, nonprofit organizations, legislators and even private citizens in improving water quality.
“Partnership is such an important word. MyRWA is great at the science and great at bringing people together,” said Martin Suuberg, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP). “Some of my favorite calls are when I can talk to municipal staff from cities like Chelsea and Everett about specific on-the-ground projects to improve water quality.”
“Day in and day out MWRA is working to improve water quality” said Fred Laskey of MWRA. “This will never end, because we at MWRA are always going to do better and work harder for even better water quality.”
Ultimately, clean water means that you can go out and enjoy the Mystic’s lakes and rivers for recreation most of the time, which is so important in the time of COVID-19.
While the Report Card looks back in time, there are other resources that give real-time estimates of water quality. The Mystic Boating Advisory makes daily predictions of whether the Mystic meets recreational boating public health standards.
In addition, a bill proposed by Senator Jehlen and Representatives Provost and Campbell would require notification throughout the Commonwealth when a combined sewer overflow occurs. MWRA has already set up an alert system for 13 sewage outflows in the Mystic and Charles Rivers.
“I used this system on Sunday [it indicated no CSO release] when I went kayaking on the Mystic River,” said Sen Jehlen. “There were so many people on the river that they ran out of boats at Condon Band Shell in Medford.”
“I am so happy to be part of these efforts,” said Mayor DeMaria of Everett. “For years the City of Everett did not have access to the waterfront and now there are so many opportunities to engage with it. I want to thank you all for making sure our river and water are clean.”
Q&A from the audience
If a part of the river is red, what does it mean for recreation? Should people avoid boating there?
The grade is a composite score of swimming and boating standards in wet and dry weather, so it is not a direct translation to a go/no-go on recreation. The grade does a better job of distinguishing between overall good and poor quality over longer time periods.
The mechanisms that introduce bacteria into urban waterways almost all increase in intensity when it rains. So, we advise folks to avoid recreation on the water during the 48 hours after a major precipitation event. We provide a recreation tool that predicts bacteria conditions on a daily basis--based on data we acquired correlating bacteria levels with environmental conditions,especially recent rain--to help people make these informed decisions on recreation. You can find this at MysticRiver.org/boatingadvisory.
How do the C rated rivers flowing into the Upper Mystic Lake lead to an A rating for the lake?
Mystic Lakes are essentially a large holding reservoir. During the time that the water from the Aberjona River sits in this lake, sunlight and settling does much to reduce the bacteria levels. They are also large, deep lakes relative to the volume of water entering, and so dilution almost certainly plays a role. The outcome is that by the time we measure the levels of bacteria at the other end of the lake, bacteria levels are near the bottom of detection limits.
What is being done to improve the Alewife River portion of the Mystic?
The Town of Belmont is actively investing in finding sources of contamination, the City of Cambridge and Arlington have ongoing work. The city of Cambridge has invested very significant money in sewer separation in the Alewife watershed, but Alewife is still the scene of combined sewer overflows. MWRA is undertaking a period of measurement to determine whether more investments are required to meet the standards agreed to in the Long Term Control Plan (LTCP) of the Boston Harbor Cleanup Plan.
Recognizing the grades are an average for the whole year, how would one know whether it's safe to swim or boat on any given day?
Whether you’re rowing, kayaking or swimming, we want users of the Mystic to be able to make informed decisions about their activity. Use MyRWA’s Daily Boating Advisory--which shows estimates of water quality conditions generated by an automated bacteria prediction model--to find out if it’s safe for recreation. This model is based on a data-intensive study that looked for correlations between bacteria levels and a variety of environmental variables, especially recent rain. The predictions are made each day at 5 AM and are valid for the remainder of the day.
Do the letter grades have practical meaning? For example, is an A drinkable water and B would be swimmable?
The letter grades themselves are suggestive rather than tied to specific activities. And we would never recommend drinking untreated water from any urban water body. But many of the water bodies in the Mystic watershed are swimmable and boatable on a regular basis. For the percentages of our water quality samples that met boating and swimming public health standards, under different environmental conditions, look at the graph and table at the bottom of this page. You will see, for instance that in dry weather conditions (less than .25 in of rain in the last 48 hours, “boat/dry” on the table) the Mystic River meets the safe boating standard and Upper Mystic Lake meets the swimming standard more than 95% of the time.
Do the different readings generally agree? For example, are waterways with high bacterial counts also have high phosphate levels?
There is some correlation with bacteria and phosphate levels, but we have not performed a detailed analysis. A good example is that big precipitation events yield both high bacteria and high nutrients in the river. That said, the nutrients are mostly from the street surfaces and the bacteria is mostly from sanitary systems leaking into the stormwater system. Learn more about the different types of pollution entering our waterways (stormwater pollution vs. CSOs) here.
Is there a plan to physically clean up Alewife Brook?
MyRWA is initiating a trash-free waters program. Stay tuned or reach out for additional info.
The underwater vegetation seems to have gotten thicker the past few years in the section of the Mystic between Medford and Arlington, just below the lakes. Are any cleanups or other remedial work planned?
Currently, we are doing some hand pulling of water chestnut and encouraging community members with access to boats to assist in this endeavor. We are greatly impacted by COVID-19. In a normal year we organize more than 1,500 volunteers to handpull and partner with the DCR to contract mechanical harvesting in the Mystic basin (wide area in between Macdonald Park and Blessing of the Bay park), but are unable to organize large events during the pandemic. We do not have current plans to address the underwater vegetation.
How do you get on the list for the MWRA instant CSO notification list?
You can sign up for MWRA notifications at: http://www.mwra.com/updates/everbridge/join.html
How does shoreline restoration figure into improving water quality. In particular, how will the new plantings related to the Clippership Connector project in Medford benefit the river?
Shoreline plantings--and riverine vegetated buffers in general--are valuable as a kind of natural “green infrastructure.” Plants prevent soil and bank erosion, keeping sediments and excess nutrients--especially phosphorus--from reaching the stream, and the plants themselves take up phosphorus, acting as a kind of filter. Somewhat counterintuitively, urban landscapes are disproportionately high contributors of excess phosphorus to water, and this can lead to cyanobacteria and algae blooms and invasive plant overgrowth and degradation of aquatic habitat. That is why, after bacteria, a major focus of our water quality work and advocacy has been around phosphorus. For more on that long-term effort, see our webpage on nutrient pollution and the recently published Alternative TMDL Report on phosphorus in the Mystic published by EPA in collaboration with DEP, MyRWA and many other partners.
Did oysters live in the river? And today are their oyster beds in the river? If so where?
Historically, there were oysters in the lower Mystic River, though there are no oyster beds today.
