Join us in celebrating some highlights from the past year!

Scroll back through the months to see some of MyRWA’s favorite moments from 2024. Thank you to all our supporters, volunteers, partners, and donors for making this work possible — together we are moving towards a more healthy, vibrant, and resilient watershed to call home.

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December

Our last outreach event of the year was at Patagonia Cambridge. With the help of River Rep volunteers, we hosted outreach tables at 50 community events across 16 watershed municipalities in 2024.

Two people stand behind a table with a black table cloth and outreach materials on it. — Credit: Kind stranger

Four screenshots of Instagram reels side by side, featuring members of the water quality team — Andy, Marja, Kate A., and Kate S. — Credit: ShaSha Kingston

You supported clean water on Giving Tuesday! Four Instagram reels we made about MyRWA’s water quality work have a combined total of 4,874 views and we raised $22,496.93 — enough to fund data collection at 12 out of 15 baseline water quality monitoring sites for the entire year.

November

Division of Marine Fisheries announced that the Mystic River herring run was the largest in all of Massachusetts for 2024 with a final modeled estimate of ~640,000 fish! In the 2024 season, volunteers counted river herring at the Mystic Lakes and Horn Pond during 1,376 in-person observation periods and through 21,474 underwater videos counted online.

A person holding a counter looks over a metal box with fish swimming across it. — Credit: David Mussina

A view from one floor up of a park in construction. One side has new grass and trees and the other side has fresh dirt and several workers installing landscaping. — Credit: Marissa Zampino

Construction of the new Little Mystic Plaza in Charlestown made great strides, replacing broken asphalt with landscaping and adding new seating, 59 shade trees, and a community-designed mural.

October

23 new resident leaders joined our work through three initiatives: Tree Ambassadors, MyRWA Climate Leaders, and Community Educators.

Resident Tree Ambassadors and City of Chelsea staff pose like trees next to newly planted trees at Malone Park. — Credit: Daria Santollani

MyRWA Ecological Resilience Manager Cat Pedemonti and Project Manager Karina Ramos walk across a wooden bridge over water with fall trees in the background. — Credit: Isaiah Johnson

We joined the Reading community and state partners in celebrating the grand opening of the Maillet, Sommes & Morgan Stormwater Wetland. This project is the first to be constructed as part of a regional effort led by the Resilient Mystic Collaborative to prepare watershed communities for extreme weather.

We added 24 new stormwater infiltration trenches across Medford, Winchester, and Arlington. We have also been working on a set of educational materials to get an inside look at this small but mighty form of green infrastructure.

Three people in high visibility vests look on at an excavator digging an infiltration trench. One person is holding a video camera on a tripod. — Credit: Isaiah Johnson

September

Our 2nd annual Canoemobile program brought 431 students along the Mystic River to participate in hands-on activities on the water and on land including watershed art, learning about trash at the Garbage Graveyard, fishing for facts with NOAA, and more.

10 middle school students and a guide wave at the camera from a light green voyager canoe. — Credit: Daria Santollani

A beige base map showing waterways in blue and green spaces in light green. Assets are marked with purple circles and one clicked, showing a text box with information about the condition (good) and the category (restroom facilities). — Credit: Rachel Fischer

Summer Greenways Fellow, Rachel Fischer completed the first ever Mystic Greenways Asset Inventory Project. Rachel traveled to 79 different Mystic Greenways segments on foot, collecting data on artwork, bike amenities, lighting, signage, waste bins, and more.

August

On August 2nd, Secretary Rebecca Tepper of MA's Energy and Environmental Affairs surprised the Malden River Works Steering Committee Meeting at Malden City Hall. Secretary Tepper brought the fantastic news that the project had been awarded a $3.5M Gateway Cities Park grant, getting the community park across its funding finish line.

8 people sit around a conference table clapping. Three people stand at the front of the table with hands clasped. — Credit: Mayor Gary Christenson of Malden

A large group of people pose for a photo under a willow tree. Three people are holding posters with water quality maps on them. Four people are holding a banner that says Three Rivers Report Card. And a few people are holding photos of fish and poop. — Credit: Daria Santollani

MyRWA hosted this year’s Three Rivers Report Card event at the Park at River’s Edge. At the event, we announced water quality grades together with the Charles River Watershed Association and the Neponset River Watershed Association.

July

Through Wicked Cool Mystic, we installed a new cooling mural at the Everett Recreation Center. The lead artist, Ashley Fitzgerald, worked with six youth from Everett High School to vision, create, and paint the mural. The mural design showcases Everett’s youth and diversity through its bright colors and spells out “Everett” in American Sign Language.

A mural on a half wall with a chain-link fence on top. The mural is showing seven hands with different skin tones signing "Everett" in American Sign Language. The last hand has red, blue, and yellow nail polish. — Credit: Marissa Zampino

Two people wearing navy MyRWA hats and blue gloves lean over the wooden boardwalk at Alewife Reservation. One person is lowering a yellow sampling pole into the water. — Credit: Jennifer Delgado

Our Environmental Science & Stewardship Fellows conducted hotspot sampling around the watershed this summer. This hotspot program studies how bacteria levels at particular locations vary with rainfall, allowing us to better predict the water quality risk after big storms.

June

With an MA Office of Outdoor Recreation Inclusive and Accessible Recreation Grant, MyRWA and our partners brought out 1,475 people to paddle for free this summer, through opportunities that included bilingual, adaptive, and youth-centered events.

Four double kayaks with people in them are lined up on the Mystic River for a photo. The kayakers are waving and making peace signs. — Credit: Elieen Turpin

Different types of brightly rainbow decorated human powered boats are paddling in a line. — Credit: Maura Conron

Gentle Giant Rowing Club and MyRWA hosted the first ever Mystic River Pride Flotilla. Dozens of decorated participants and human-powered boats paddled together in a parade on the river to celebrate LGBTQIA+ people and their allies.

May

We collaborated with Green & Open Somerville to host four depaving parties in East Somerville this year. Through volunteer power, 1,500 sqft of pavement was removed from resident yards, opening the ground back up to filter rainwater and become greenspace that cools the neighborhood, contributes to wildlife habitat, and grows the urban connection to nature.

One volunteer holds a metal bar to lift a section of pavement while another volunteer swings a sledge hammer on the same section. — Credit: Daria Santollani

Dozens of people run past the start line for the 2024 Herring Run and Paddle. — Credit: David Mussina

419 people participated in the 28th Herring Run & Paddle race to celebrate the return of river herring in the spring and our goal of rivers and parks that are full of nature and free of pollution.

April

In Earth Month alone, 389 volunteers joined us at 9 sites around the watershed to clean up trash, remove invasive plants, and re-establish important wetland habitat. We are seeing real improvements in ecosystem health and are so grateful to all the volunteers and partners who supported stewardship of the river and surrounding parks this year!

A group of about 20 volunteers wearing rain gear pose for a photo with their collection of trash bags. — Credit: Matvei Mozhaev

13 people are standing around a large wooden conference table with a long printed map of the Mystic Lakes Path. One person is leaning over the map to point to something. — Credit: Isaiah Johnson

A 10-person resident steering committee guided a robust community engagement process for redesigning the Mystic Lakes Path, an important piece of our Mystic Greenways vision. A series of public meetings this winter and spring contributed to a final conceptual design that has been submitted to the Department of Conservation and Recreation.

March

To make room for our growing team, MyRWA moved to a new office at 23 Maple St. in Arlington. It has been a joy to create our dream office and welcome you into our new space during several events this past year.

A group of MyRWA staff members strike funny poses on the front stairs of our new office - a three story house with light grey paneling. — Credit: Daria Santollani

Two volunteers stand by a red pickup truck with several bare root trees in the bed. — Credit: Daria Santollani

We supported TreesMedford with two resident tree giveaways this past year. Incredible volunteer delivery teams distributed 136 bare root trees to be planted in Medford resident yards.

February

The CLEANAIR team held a series of five Love Your Lungs listening sessions across 4 communities (East Boston, Charlestown, Malden, and Everett) to share back survey data and get resident input on short-term air pollution monitoring projects.

A group of people stand around two poster boards. One of the boards has bar graphs depicting survey responses about air quality and the other poster board has pink, orange, and yellow sticky notes on it. — Credit: Daria Santollani

Kids and parents lay on yoga mats in a circular grassy clearing. In the middle is a circular cloth with red, blue, green, and yellow segments.

MyRWA Education Manager Natalia Bayona completed her certification as a yoga instructor and social emotional learning (SEL) facilitator this year. Natalia’s training has already been incorporated into our programs including this Winter Play Day Workshop at the Somerville Community Growing Center and our Beginner Watercolor Workshop at Torbert Macdonald Park.

January

Wicked Cool Mystic held a celebration with over 50 residents in Malden to share back survey results and listen to resident concerns about heat. This was the last event of a months-long outreach effort led by eight Wicked Cool Ambassadors to learn about how residents in Everett, Malden, Chelsea, and Arlington experience extreme heat. The top cooling solutions that emerged from this community engagement were trees, shading structures, and water features like splash pads and water fountains. Work is already underway to implement these cooling solutions!

People sit at cafeteria tables facing a large pull down screen. On the screen is a bar graph showing responses to the question "When it is very hot outside, how often do you use air conditioning in your home?" — Credit: Daria Santollani

Radhika Fox smiles behind a grey podium that says "Healing, Bridging, Thriving - A Summit on Arts and Culture in our Communities" — Credit: EPA

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Water Head Radhika Fox announced that we were chosen as one of six locations across the country to be a part of the inaugural cohort for the EPA Artist-in-Residence Program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). We received 60 applications during our call for artists and assembled an 8-person steering committee of local experts and residents to choose MyRWA’s first ever Artist-in-Residence. Thank you to the Massachusetts Bays National Estuary Partnership for funding this program!