Working to Clean up the Mystic River; SNN reports!

SNN Video on the Mystic River Clean up

Somerville, MA, May 7, 2014 – Ducks and boaters don’t seem to mind, but many humans and associations do, and so does the Environmental Protection Agency. The water in the Mystic River is consistently graded “D” for its poor quality.

“This is not a problem that has developed recently,” Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA) Executive Director EkOngKar Singh Khalsa told Somerville Neighborhood News. “This grade is the result of the impacts of pollution over 200 years.”

The Mystic and Malden rivers were home to many factories, which left behind pollutants, in the soil and in river sediments. Today, the river and all the other streams and lakes in the watershed area also get contaminated by leakage from sewer pipes and by rain runoff: as water runs across pavement, it picks up all kinds of garbage, bacteria and pollutants like motor oil and gasoline. Somervile is about 75 percent paved.

The Mystic River watershed is made up of 22 communities, and “any raindrop, any water will eventually end up in the Mystic River,” Elizabeth Glivinski of the MyRWA explained. “There are a lot of water quality issues and sediment issues.”

One of the MyRWA’s many programs involves having volunteers count the number of herring who climb a fish ladder from the Lower to the Upper Mystic Lake. Writer Fred Langa is among the scores of people who sign up to lend a hand.

“You can think of the herring and the other fish in the river here like canaries in the coal mine, because they give a general indication not just of the river but of the overall environment,” Langa, a Medford resident, explained. “The Mystic River still needs work. This end is really beautiful. As you can see, it’s green and very pleasant. The other end of the Mystic is pretty beat up and really needs help.”

Representative Denise Provost (D-Middlesex) is among those who wants to help. She recently proposed a bill that would create a Mystic River Watershed Water Quality Commission. The commission, which would be co-chaired by the House and Senate Chairs of the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture, would be charged with studying how to improve the water quality.

Among other things, the bill, which is co-sponsored by senators Sal DiDomenico (D-Middlesex and Suffolk) and Pat Jehlen (D-2nd Middlesex district) would bring together all of the stakeholders from all the surrounding communities.

“One of the problems that the Mystic has from the point of view of addressing its overall problems is that, they’re not overall problems at the moment. They’re the problems of many individual jurisdictions,” Provost explained.