Recently, MyRWA awarded the City of Cambridge the Mystic Municipal Leadership Award and Sean Riley, the Forest & Park Supervisor of Belle Isle Marsh and Rumney Marsh, the Champion Awarded. These two partners—are helping reshape our watershed—from ensuring we can act on climate challenges and helping us protect Belle Isle Marsh respectively.
MUNICIPAL LEADERSHIP AWARD: CITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Iram Farooq, Assistant City Manager of Cambridge, accepting the Mystic Municipal Leadership Award, presented by Nasser Brahim, Board Member, on behalf of the Mystic River Watershed Association.
Cambridge is a world leader in terms of identifying, planning, committing to, and acting on climate challenges — especially in the absence of some catastrophic event like Hurricane Maria or Superstorm Sandy, or Ida, or Matthew, or Florence. They know, because they do the math and seek out the best available science, that our luck will run out — is running out, and that we need to act to protect our people and places from harm and do our share going carbon neutral.
Cambridge is only 7 square miles. That's 0.000000002% of the United States (eight zeroes). Cambridge's impact on climate is minuscule within its own municipal boundaries, but increasingly critical to its neighbors and beyond. Cambridge, on its own dime, or more than a dime, paid a world class climate scientist to downscale the best global climate models for rainfall to create local projections for stormwater flooding. They helped conceive of the idea and were a founding member of the Resilient Mystic Collaborative, a voluntary partnership among 20 communities that MyRWA co-facilitates. They then gave their stormwater model to the rest of the watershed so other communities could understand their vulnerabilities and manage flooding on a regional scale.
Cambridge also invested in understand its risk of coastal flooding, which is remarkably high, given that the City is entirely behind two dams, or not surprising at all, given both the Mystic and Charles Rivers used to be tidal estuaries that reached far inland. Realizing that multiple communities would be at risk from corrosive salt water flooding if these dams failed, they worked with other Resilient Mystic Collaborative communities to lobby the state legislature and Baker Administration to increase their resilience. This led to a multi-year working group with the Department of Conservation and Recreation and a much broader vision for coastal flood resilience. Because of Cambridge's regional leadership and generosity in sharing its outstanding research, Resilient Mystic Collaborative communities are well positioned to secure over $100 million in state and federal funding over the next few years to manage the freshwater and saltwater flood risks the city identified. Cambridge is now in the process of testing out heat resilient strategies to keep priority residents and workers safe during heatwaves.
Mystic Champion Award: Sean Riley, Dept. of Conservation and Recreation
Cat Pedemonti from MyRWA presenting the Mystic Champion Award to Sean Riley, forest & Park Supervisor of Belle Isle Marsh and Rumney Marsh, which is owned and managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Sean works for the MA Department of Conservation and Recreation and is the site supervisor of Belle Isle Marsh, the largest remaining salt marsh in the Boston Harbor and the Mystic River watershed. Belle Isle Marsh is an important place as both habitat for birds including a number of endangered species and as a nature based solution to climate change. As our seas get higher and our storms get more intense, it will act as a buffer to the neighborhoods of East Boston, Revere, and Winthrop. Belle Isle is an incredibly important place for both wildlife and people. It seems fitting that someone as special and unique as Sean would steward this special and unique place.
Sean seems to know every inch of the 300 acres of Belle Isle. Sean really sees the land, the water, the wildlife, the plants, the people, the birds that make up Belle Isle Marsh, and weaves this knowledge together into a really sophisticated understanding of the system that is Belle Isle. And this knowledge has been particularly invaluable as we look for ways to preserve Belle Isle in the face of those rising seas and increasingly intense storms so that it can keep functioning as both wildlife habitat and a buffer to sea level rise and coastal surges.
But that still doesn’t quite capture what is so special, so loved about Sean. So to paint a fuller picture, Sean is an avid birder, an educator, a wildlife photographer and also a bird bander. But he doesn’t do these things in isolation — wherever he is and whatever he’s doing, he always seems to be sharing this love and knowledge he has for the natural world with others. Whether it’s one of his Saturday morning walks or a field trip with a group of 60 4th graders or a 9pm owl banding event, he is always sharing his knowledge and love for the land and the wildlife with someone.
Listen to some of what our partners have to say about why it is so special to work with Sean:
“Sean is all heart. He is as knowledgeable as he is kind. He trudges along gallantly, and I hope others are as inspired by him as I am. We need wetlands, and wetlands need Seans.”
"Sean makes this marsh meaningful. Not only his expertise and level of commitment, but his willingness to bring the marsh to life for people who have never visited."
“Sean’s personal commitment is what makes him such a great partner and liaison for all the groups around belle isle marsh trying to determine best outcomes for the marsh. Everyone trusts Sean for wanting the best for the marsh. He recognizes the value of all partners and helps bring them together for the best outcome.”
"Every park needs a Sean."
“When I think of bottomless love and admiration, the type you only see in the movies, I think about the way Sean looks at saw-whet owls. When I think about caring for others, I think about the way Sean handles tiny salt marsh sparrows while getting them out of a mist net during banding season. And when I think about devotion - I think about all the times Sean’s gone into the mosquito ridden marsh in the middle of July covered head to toe mosquito gear. The world is a tough place and something is hard to truly believe any of our work is moving the needle - but Sean exemplifies what one person can do to completely change something for the better. Without his deep love for the natural world and his leadership as the sole full-time staff member at belle, we might not know what a richly diverse ecosystem Belle Isle is and ways to protect it. Thank you for all that you do!”
