by Andy Hrycyna, MyRWA Watershed Scientist
Change is slow, but data is the only way forward
I have been working at MyRWA on water quality issues (happily, proudly!) for 8 years. And we have been publishing a water quality report card in collaboration with EPA for longer than that. Our 22-year-old water quality baseline program is older still, thanks to work of countless volunteers.
One detail might stand out to you when you look at the historical data: The grades for most sites (with notable exceptions) have not changed very much over this period.
So why do we still keep gathering this data? Why value does this work continue to have? Let’s start with a bit of history.
History of the Report Card
When I arrived at MyRWA, the watershed report card had a different form. Instead of many individual grades, the entire watershed received a single aggregate EPA grade. We felt then that this was more obscuring than helpful, averaging values from different water bodies in a way that was comparing apples to oranges. In 2014, we realized we had enough data available to do it a different way. With work, and invaluable help from brilliant collaborators, we were able to devise a rigorous system that gave readers a much more useful picture of variation in water quality across the whole watershed, a reporting model that is now emulated in the other main river systems of Boston Harbor, the Charles and the Neponset.
What the data show
What did we find that first year? In short, that new report card showed:
that the Mystic River (B+ to A) is a notably clean urban river, contrary to widespread perception before that, and that this should be celebrated;
that the Mystic Lakes, where many people swim and boat, have excellent water quality, meeting recreational standards almost all the time;
that there are continued sources of wastewater contamination--which the bacteria-based criteria of the Mystic report card are designed to detect;
that conditions are on average consistently worse when it rains, given the ways that wastewater contamination of stormwater occurs;
and that some major tributaries of the Mystic receive failing or close to failing grades, spotlighting the work that needs to be done to fulfill the promise of the Clean Water Act.
The thing is, 8 years later, the picture remains largely the same. So why is continued data important? Don’t we know everything we need to know already?
Examples of improvement
First, it’s not precisely accurate to say that the picture has remained the same. Some tributaries to the Mystic River have shown remarkable improvement. The clearest example is Island End River in Chelsea and Everett, where the grade has literally gone from F to A:
What explains this dramatic change? Infrastructure. Pushed by EPA, and guided by the evidence from the data in the report card, municipal engineers in Chelsea and Everett did detective work that led to the discovery of accidental/illicit connection of a wastewater pipe to the stormwater system from a large development. The problem was corrected, and conditions improved. The “F” pointed to a pollution source. When they turned off the pollution source, the “F” became and “A.”
We would not be able to tell this story without long-term data sets. If the goal is improvement in water quality everywhere, we won’t know when that goal is reached without continued data acquisition.
Why data are powerful
But detecting future changes is not the only reason I believe our Report Card plays an important public function. I believe our data is powerful in additional ways, today and every day:
Public education. If you asked me years ago, did I think untreated wastewater made its way make its way routinely to our urban waterways, I would have said no, that’s 16th century Europe. But it does, and the reasons why are complicated and important, and we believe all residents have a right to information that lets them understand how their cities work.
Use in other data analyses. Our baseline data program captures many more parameters than the bacteria concentrations that are used in the Report Card. 15 years of baseline data helped make the case for the crucial Mystic Alternative TMDL for Phosphorus, published by the EPA and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. When that report has its full effect in the form of new regulations on phosphorus pollution, it will have a huge impact on the ecological integrity of water bodies in the watershed. Similarly, data from the Malden River and Mill Creek are being used to inform ongoing restoration projects in those areas.
Reminder of the importance of infrastructure investment. Water quality problems in urban areas like ours do not change except through the investment of significant infrastructure spending. Especially in these next few years when unprecedented amounts of federal money are being invested in infrastructure, data like ours can help set priorities.
Regional storytelling. For the past couple of years, we have been announcing our Water Quality Report Card in collaboration with the Charles and Neponset Rivers at public events with EPA officials and many others. This year Senator (and Malden Resident) Ed Markey spoke at our joint event, remembering growing up as boy next to a polluted Malden River, and celebrating progress in greater Boston since then.
Media coverage. The first two years we published our water-body-by-water-body Report Card, the Boston Globe published two editorials calling on watershed municipalities to invest in infrastructure. This year and last our joint press event we got coverage on WBUR and in the Boston Globe. The Report Card can get people’s attention.
Holding state, federal, and local agencies accountable. We tremendously value our partnerships with government partners from EPA to MassDEP to local municipalities. But we also value our independence, and non-profit organizations can call government to account in a variety of ways, when more needs to be done.
Informing equity work. More often than not, our Report Card shows that the remaining problems—be they polluted tributaries or remaining combined sewer overflows—disproportionately affect the environments of people living in environmental justice communities, communities that have historically borne a disproportionate impact of many different kinds of environmental stresses, often communities of color, communities with people who are recent immigrants, and people with lower incomes. Water quality data can serve as one important tool in our fight for equitable outcomes.
Volunteers and the non-profit environmental space
Finally, I will say that I am enormously proud of the work we do as a non-profit organization to record, analyze and publicize water quality data. Our work complements the work of federal and state agencies that are all part of the greater story of the success story of the Clean Water Act in the United States.
But absolutely none of what we do would be possible with the work of hundreds of volunteers over the years. We would not have the public knowledge we have about greater Boston’s water without your work.
We owe them a huge, collective thank you.
