Understanding and improving water quality is a core mission of the Alliance for the Mystic River Watershed. Since our inception we have sought to acknowledge the numerous Tribal, Federal, State, Municipal, and non-profit efforts to monitor and protect our vital waterways.
We hope to add to these efforts through developing a place based monitoring, education, and action plan as part of our Watershed Resilience Action Plan (WRAP). In early September 2024, members of the Water Quality working group including Beth, Richard, Maggie, Bob and Betsy Graham, and Dr. Zbigniew Grabowski, drafted a preliminary action plan (see photos). If you are interested in being part of this effort, please send us an email at info@alliancemrw.org or click on the qr code. And if you haven’t signed up for regular newsletters and email updates, please do so at www.alliancemrw.org!
Our regenerative approach towards watershed planning holds that in order to restore the health of the land, water, ecosystems (including people) of the watershed, we need to focus on our relationships to each other, the ecosystem, and the technologies that mediate our relationship with the place we live.
This focus on relationship makes it clear that human relationships with the land over the past few hundred years have harmed the aquatic ecosystem of the river, as evidenced by the identification of the estuarine portion and parts of the upstream reaches as impaired - or unsuitable - for its designated uses of swimming, wading, boating, recreation, and commercial fishing.
Sections of waterways in the Mystic River Watershed that are known to be impaired include Williams Brook, sections of Whitford Brook, and the mouth of the river. Many segments have not been assessed. Source: CT DEEP Impaired Waterways 2022.
Our fisheries face increasing challenges, with an ongoing lobster crisis, increasing challenges to shellfishing, and a general trend favoring warm water fishes, which compounds known historical issues with fisheries management. The Mystic River is listed as “Prohibited” for shellfishing for sustenance…shellfish farmers have to take the oysters out to deep water so they can clean out before they can be eaten.
Increasingly frequent beach closures provide additional evidence of the mounting water quality challenges in our watershed and the greater Long Island Sound, which will only be worsened by climate change. A participant in the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Youth Watersheds and Forestry Summer camp examines an Oyster picked near Mason’s Island/Chippachauge.
Water Quality Impairment Does Not Impact Everyone Equally
These impacts have been felt unevenly by different communities, an unevenness that will be exacerbated by climate change - an inequality that calls us to understand the dimensions of Indigenous Environmental Justice, Climate Justice, Environmental Justice, and Ecological Justice pertaining to water quality within our watershed.
What Can We Do About Water Quality?
In response to these existing and increasing challenges, the Alliance for the Mystic River Watershed Water Quality working group seeks to:
Engage our Communities: Build relationships among our communities so as to engage in information exchange/co-learning about about the importance of water quality for human and ecological health, and strategies to heal ourselves and our waterways including the role of:
Personal Choices: Actions that can be taken at the personal level, such as consumer choices, including food, cleaning products, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, clothing, detergents, lawn care and building material choices etc that directly and indirectly affect water quality - including infrastructures such as septic systems, municipal waste water treatment (or Publicly Owned Treatment Works), stormwater systems, and ecosystems
Septic and municipal wastewater systems: including assessing and mapping current conditions, best management practices for current systems, issues with the septic paradigm, and traditional and emergent technologies that can eliminate septic system based water pollution, incl. Composting toilets, waste stream separation, home and community scale biogas.
Municipal Waste Water - emerging technologies and best practices - biogas, nutrient recovery, pharmaceutical recovery
Stormwater Systems - including assessing and mapping current conditions and outflows, MS4 regulations, need to incorporate Green Stormwater Infrastructure, eliminate sources of contaminants into stormwater systems
Ecological health and integrity - ecosystems require nutrients and can moderate bacterial loading but require structural integrity for ecological processes to work - this includes riparian habitat, healthy wetlands and shorelines, and can require removing bank armoring, channelization, and dams - restoring the living sponge and filters of the landscape
Current and emerging regulations - Clean Water Act, CT Environmental Protection Act, Tribal Law examples - Treaty obligations and tribal water quality programs - like The Penobscot Water Quality program, Public Act 21-29 requiring all CT municipalities to enact zoning regulations to protect LIS water quality and habitat integrity, ongoing attempts to regulate PFAS, pharmaceuticals and personal care products.
Understand Existing Water Quality Monitoring Efforts: Identify existing information and monitoring programs on water quality from Tribal, Federal, State, and Non-profit organizations
Including data from/on
Habitat and species ranges from UConn CLEAR, USGS, other sources
Other studies - e.g. UConn PFAS study
Develop Our own monitoring program to fill gaps in our current knowledge of water quality conditions and sources of impairment including
Identification of relevant funding sources
Proper equipment that we already have and need access to, intensive monitoring campaign being planned for Fall 2024 and Spring 2025!
How to involve community members via citizen science
Building relationships with laboratories, testing facilities, and researchers
Actionable mapping of previously and currently collected data
Integrating items 1-3 into the watershed resilience action plan to identify actionable interventions and sources of grant funding for them with our partners
We would love to hear your thoughts and feelings about this draft plan. At present this work is largely unfunded and relies upon our member donations, so please consider a tax-deductible donation today (if you are a Charter Oak Credit Union member your donation can be matched!), or donate at Water Fest 2024!
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or good jokes, give us a shout at info@alliancemrw.org!
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