Did You Know? Clean, Plentiful and Free Flowing Water in 2013 Thanks to Watershed Associations

by Dorie Stolley, Watershed Action Alliance Coordinator and Outreach Manager

With Thanksgiving recently passed and the New Year on its way, it’s a good time to look back over the year and the accomplishments of watershed associations in southeastern Massachusetts, which work for clean, plentiful and free flowing water for both wildlife and people.

Clean Water. This year scores of watershed volunteers across the region participated in cleanup efforts, removing debris that can strangle streams, plastic that can poison fish and people, and old traps and other items that can mutilate or kill wildlife. For example, one hundred shopping carts, 12 bicycles, toilets and tires were hauled out of the choked Neponset River during one day in August. Plastic drink bottles by the hundreds, several lobster traps and innumerable pieces of Styrofoam were gleaned from the mouth of the Eel River in November.  The Butt Brigade was launched in Narragansett Bay to gather data about discarded cigarette butts, which will be used to target solutions for this insidious littering problem.

Volunteers haul a shopping cart out of the Neponset River in August.

Other things that foul our water are less visible. Common pollutants include pesticides, bacteria, and nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which, in excess, can over fertilize water causing rampant algae and plant growth. The algae can clog waterways, choke out useful plants and even lower oxygen levels causing fish kills.  The biggest nutrient problems come from wastewater treatment plants, leaky sewage systems, and untreated polluted runoff from roads and yards during storms, which also can provide a lot of bacteria. To combat these evils, in 2013 watershed associations worked on a host of projects including installing rain gardens, pushing for better regulations for wastewater treatment plants and proposing less costly alternative to updating septic systems.

Rain gardens not only remove nutrients from runoff, they filter out other pollutants and sediment, which makes them cost effective in the fight to prevent tainted water from entering our streams. A rain garden is strategically placed in a depression near a runoff source, like a road that channels water or the edge of a parking lot. It is planted with deep-rooted native plants, which also beautify the landscape, and must be maintained periodically for best performance.

Westport, MA is enjoying numerous new rain gardens and avoiding the costs of more expensive rainwater runoff treatment techniques because of a partnership between the Westport River Watershed Alliance, the Town of Westport and the Buzzard’s Bay National Estuaries Program. Volunteers contribute to this work, too: for instance, they planted over 500 plants in the rain gardens at the Westport Middle School.

Other ways that watershed associations in southeastern Massachusetts worked to achieve cleaner water included identifying areas where nonpoint source pollution was worst and working with towns to install structural filters, recommending practices for protecting groundwater and Cape Cod Bay for the Plymouth Nuclear Power Plant, and educating residents on how to keep pollutants out of the water, for instance, by cleaning up pet waste and using minimal amount of fertilizer (or none) on lawns.

New sign in Scituate reminding watershed
residents to conserve  water.

Plentiful Water. Not only did watershed associations work to keep water clean, they worked to keep it plentiful. Plentiful water in streams and rivers is necessary for river herring to travel upstream to spawn in the spring. In the summer and fall, the outmigration of young herring from their hatching grounds in freshwater to the ocean where they spend much of each year is dependent on adequate water as well. To this end, in 2013, summer residential water restrictions on alternate days put in place by North and South Rivers Watershed Association once again saved 30,000 gallons per day on First Herring Brook in Scituate. A new sign reminding residents to conserve water during summer months and thanking them for their efforts during times of adequate streamflow was installed along a major travel route.

2013 saw a giant step forward in the decades-long effort to restore adequate streamflow to the Jones River in Kingston. Silver Lake is the headwaters of the Jones, however, the City of Brockton withdraws so much water from it that the stream has not flowed normally for decades to the great detriment of wildlife, particularly aquatic species such as river herring. This year, as part of the Sustainable Water Management Initiative, a grant allowed for a report on water use operations of Silver Lake and the nearby Monponsett Ponds. Its conclusions were that the present use is not sustainable and is detrimentally impacting the ecological health of the river, meaning that more water is needed to flow in the Jones. The completion of this report is an important step in returning enough water to the Jones for fish to flourish and the ecosystem as a whole to thrive.

 

Plantings on the restored stream bank by the former
Whittenton dam in the Taunton watershed.

Free Flowing Water. This year saw much headway on projects to remove outdated dams that block the flow of water, form obstructions to river herring and other migratory fish and trap stagnant water. For instance, in the Taunton watershed, after 170 years in place, the Whittenton dam came down and its waters were released back into the original channel. Within weeks, a crew rebuilt its stream banks and replanted the wetlands. It is the second of three dams along the Mill River to be removed. Once the third is gone, an unprecedented 30 miles of habitat will be opened up to migratory fish like river herring and American Eel. Other benefits of this project are the elimination of the risk of catastrophic flooding from a breach of the dam and new recreational opportunities for residents.

This is just a smattering of all of the work done by watershed associations in 2013. The member organizations of Watershed Action Alliance work for you to protect water resources and the wildlife that depends upon them and to provide opportunities for water recreation. Join your association to support their work. To find your watershed association, visit http://watershedaction.org.