We are excited to share that TWO MyRWA staff members — Melanie Gárate, Climate Resiliency Manager, and Andy Hrycyna, Watershed Scientist — were chosen as Urban Waters Learning Network award recipients at this year’s national River Rally conference in Washington DC. This is an unprecedented achievement at MyRWA and also at this national event as they have never before given two awards to the same organization.
Melanie Gárate (left) receives the Environmental Justice & Equity Expert Award and Andy Hrycyna (right) receives the Water Quality & Monitoring Expert Award. PC: Daria Clark
Melanie was nominated for and received an Expert Award in the category of Environmental Justice & Equity. This recognition reflects a deep respect for her commitment to improving urban waterways and benefiting surrounding communities.
About Melanie: Melanie Gárate is MyRWA’s Climate Resiliency Manager. Her work focuses on the intersection of climate change, social justice, racial justice, community organizing and advocacy. She holds a Master of Science degree in Marine Ecology and Climate Change from the University of Rhode Island where she studied nutrient cycling and greenhouse gas fluxes from coastal Rhode Island and Puerto Rico. A bilingual native of the Pacific Ocean and Andean mountains of Chile, Melanie combines her science background with a deep understanding of the lived experience of environmental justice residents that many researchers and policy makers lack. Four projects she leads or co-leads demonstrate the kind of equity-centric, proactive work she does to help close climate resilience gaps between low- or now-income BIPOC residents and workers and those who are more socially and financially more resilient.
• Since joining MyRWA in October 2019, Melanie has quickly emerged as a Greater Boston thought leader on equitable climate resilience. She was specifically tapped by a local foundation to give out approximately $400,000 in cooling-assistance grants per year to neighborhood organizations from communities especially hard hit by COVID. She is now leading community-led efforts to redesign the grants program long term to best meet local needs.
• A bilingual Chilean-born marine biologist (and first person in her family to go to college), Melanie is initiating a project to bring BIPOC science students from nearby UMass Boston to engage in climate resilience research in Belle Isle Marsh, the largest remaining salt marsh in Boston Harbor.
• With the Boston Museum of Science, Melanie co-led a community science project called Wicked Hot Mystic, which took ground-level air quality, heat, and humidity data during a heatwave in 2021. These data will be used to develop watershed-wide urban heat island maps and to engage with neighborhood groups to develop solutions to keep people safe.
• Finally, Melanie was a project leader for a two-year, $390,000 regional Lower Mystic Vulnerability Assessment. Julie Wormser co-led a functional exercise involving infrastructure facilities that provided critical information on how a major (2050 1%) coastal storm would cause Greater Boston’s transportation, food, energy, water, and communications infrastructure to fail. Melanie co-led a social vulnerability assessment involving over 400 low-income BIPOC residents that helped us understand how infrastructure failure would affect their health, housing and livelihoods. We are now using these data to work with communities to prioritize climate investments that best protect vulnerable people.
Andy was nominated and received an Expert Award in the category of Water Quality & Monitoring. This award recognizes Andy's considerable expertise in monitoring, data collection, storytelling, development of methods, and the science for our Mystic River Alternative TMDL.
About Andy: In the eight years that Andy has been on staff at MyRWA, he has kept our Baseline Monitoring Program running while adding new and innovative projects that are expanding the reach and efficacy of our volunteer science work and improving the condition of the watershed. The following programs and projects showcase how Andy has influenced and evolved our organization to better meet our mission to “protect and restore the Mystic River, its tributaries and watershed lands for the benefit of present and future generations.”
• Improving efficacy of our water quality report card: Early in his tenure, Andy identified that the existing Report Card Framework on water quality was not telling an accurate story of the watershed. He rightly identified that lumping the distressed water bodies (F grades with the water bodies meeting standards (A-B) created D+ grades. A change to the grading system, assigning grades to each waterbody, gave the chance to shine a light where investment required and to celebrate the great and safe recreation opportunities in the watershed. Since we changed thegrade, two other local watersheds have created a new system based on the model that Andy developed.
• Developing a Mystic daily boating advisory: Andy developed an automated bacteria prediction model to inform the public when it is safe to boat. During the boating season, estimates of water quality conditions are generated by this prediction model and by additional cyanobacteria testing. The predictions are made each day at 5 AM and are valid for the remainder of the day and are shared via Twitter (@safemystic).
• Expanding opportunities for volunteer science with an underwater fish camera: In 2018, Andy installed an underwater camera that connects 8,000 people annually to an online fish-counting platform. This system makes a largely hidden migration visible and raises awareness of these anadromous fish. The online platform gives people of all ages and abilities the chance to contribute to science and has been especially valuable during the pandemic when virtual engagement is critical. These online scientists are creating one of the richest records on fish migration anywhere helping to track the plight of river herring.
• Advancing MyRWA’s work to predict cyanobacteria outbreaks: Andy is leading an effort to monitor harmful Algal Blooms throughout the watershed. He is currently partnering with the University of New Hampshire to develop new protocols for accurate predictions of toxin concentrations. A byproduct of this important work to protect public health, Andy has been mentoring college students involved in the project.
• Expanding water sampling to test for chloride: Concerned with the impacts of road salt on our urban watershed, Andy created and is leading expanded sampling for chloride. This effort is now being replicated by neighboring Charles River and Neponset River Watersheds and the data is being shared with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.
• Scaling-up green infrastructure watershed-wide: Andy has led the development of a low-cost, replicable trench that infiltrates stormwater via the adjacent catch basin. The genesis of the project was the recognition that traditional rain gardens constructed in municipal streets were losing their appeal given the cost of engineering services to design and municipal capacity needed for maintenance. The infiltration trenches are a replicable design based on a set of field measurements. They remove the pollutants in the first flush -and can be implemented for much less than traditional green infrastructure. To date, Andy and municipal partners have constructed 98 trenches.
PC: Daria Clark
Congratulations to Melanie, Andy, and all of the other award recipients at this year’s River Rally conference! Read more about the Urban Waters Learning Network awards here >>>
