Mystic Watershed Collaborative
Steering Committee Meeting
September 4th, 9:30 am - 11:00 am

Attending: Kwabena Kyei-Aboagye, Molly Anderson, Eleanor Bates, Lisa Brukilacchio (facilitator), Dale Bryan, John Durant, Paul Kirshen, Janet Kovner, Bill Maer, Grace Perez, Lisa Waters

Next Meeting: October 10th, 2002 - 9:30 am - 11:00 am at TIE
Facilitator: Dale Bryan

Introduction: The MWC Steering Committee welcomed Eleanor Bates, the new Mass Water Watch representative. Eleanor is a recent graduate of Duke University with a degree in Geology. Her main goals with the Water Watch program are to develop an internship program and to establish course credit for participants of the Water Watch program.

Omidyar Scholars: Scholars under the instruction of Nancy Gabriel are in need of watershed related projects. These sophomores and juniors will be broken into teams of 2 to 4 students with 10 – 14 total students participating. Five projects need to be developed to work on for approximately 5 to 8 hours per week for one year. The projects need to involve planning and development skills. These project topics will be reflective of the collaborative. The project topics need to be submitted to Nancy Gabriel by Monday, September 9th. Organizations that are working with the students include: Groundwork Somerville, Wendy Campbell, Eagle Eye Institute, and Tom Lincoln. It was requested hat the Aberjona study, an EPA study that will develop initial results for risk assessment, be added to the project list. This specific study is hopefully to be a partnership between Tufts and the Woburn citizens.

Lisa B’s new class this fall semester are potential Omidyar Scholars for next year. For this class, Lisa will be assigning community placements of 3 hours each.

Mass Water Watch: A suggestion was made to Eleanor that a potentially good site for future cleanups be the area around South St. in Medford (between Winthrop and the bridge). This location is where the new provost lives and he is eager to establish a new education plan to benefit the river.

Paul and Eleanor will be trying to make Mass Water Watch an official Tufts student organization and eligible as an intern site. Paul has agreed to become their faculty sponsor.

Time: A new time for the collaborative needs to be chosen for the fall semester. Lisa W. will send an email to everyone allowing them to choose between the 2nd Thursday or Friday of each month.

New Members: The time has come that the collaborative needs to select new student representative(s) to join the steering committee. The committee would like to add at least 2 new student members. Kathleen Regan, who participated in the River Institute was one suggestion. Placing an ad in the Tufts Daily was also another idea on how to recruit new student representatives.

A representative for CCAG is also needed. Theresa may be interested in becoming a member since she is a member of CCAG and is interested in being a MyRWA board member.

MyRWA Web Site: Currently, Josh Davis is managing the MyRWA web site although, due to his relocation to Minnesota, MyRWA is looking into other candidates to take over the site. John Morris, development consultant for MyRWA, has offered to manage the site for free as long as the site is transferred to his server. To avoid discontinuity of the site, the Collaborative has decided to allow Lisa Waters to become the new web master being that she manages most environmental sites at Tufts already.

Funding Proposal: Despite the difficulty pulling the proposal together in such a limited time frame, the proposal was submitted on time thanks to Janet’s timely delivery service. If the board does reject the proposal then we need to request of the foundation an additional chance to resubmit the proposal in the next round. This proposal is for $50,000/yr for 3 years to help improve access to the river, increase outreach and education in the communities of Somerville, Malden, Medford, and Charlestown.

EMPACT: This 2 year grant is used to setup a real-time water quality monitoring on five sites on the Mystic River and to implement public outreach. On Friday, the physical infrastructure will be setup for the 5th site on Alewife Brook. A website that has been setup for the project has surpassed its launching deadline. The question has been raised if the site is ready to be launched now. Paul will be accepting comments on whether the site should be launched and any recommended changes.

Fall Activities: The upcoming events are:

• Coastsweep – September 21st

• Celebrate a Year of Clean Water – MyRWA is cosponsoring

• MyRWA Annual Meeting – October 17th from 6 to 9 pm in the Asean Auditorium. The speaker will be discussing an Aberjona River study and porpoises.

• Make a Difference Cleanup – October 26th

EJAM: MyRWA was awarded a small grants award for an environmental justice project, Environmental Justice Across the Mystic (EJAM). An advisory committee needs to be established soon to work with MWC to implement this grant. Dale, Lisa, Grace, and Julian and hopefully Veronice Eady and Aaron Toffler will meet on the 11th at 3:30pm to kick-off the process, which includes hiring a student as EJAM coordinator. The project will provide three public forums, 2-3 EJ trainings and culminate in a Mystic EJ Summit, with three RI interns in Summer 2003 to be dedicated to EJ related projects developed through this year long process of the Mystic learning about and exploring EJ in the watershed.
Rusty Russell’s Class: The 1st meeting for the Environmental Law class will be on September 4th. Rusty has requested the Collaborative’s help to identify what project are most important and how his class can be most beneficial and useful. One-half of the projects in this class will be focused on MyRWA recommendations. A few of the suggestions for projects are to improve public access in Charlestown, address the overflows in the Alewife and possible solutions.

EPA Watershed Initiative: Kwabena spoke with Sharon McGregor about the Mystic being a potential candidate for the EPA Watershed Initiative. She expressed that it is a very good site for this initiative and has a good chance of being chosen. The state has to recommend the watershed; it also appears that the state can apply and recommend themselves, as well. The governor determines the final candidates. The deadline for the state to come up with the recommendations will be in November. We need to take a political approach to market the Mystic to Congress and the Senator. A project list needs to be compiled and the MWC needs to identify environmental issues that produce results. A meeting will be held on 9/17 to address this opportunity.

NSP – EPA Cooperative Agreement “Conducting research to Develop Improved Methods and Approaches to Empower Communities to Participate More Effectively in Environmental Cleanups”: Molly A introduced this topic. The MWC should to be a part of this agreement. Brownfields would be a great topic to concentrate on for the agreement.