MWC Meeting Minutes
Tufts Institute of the Environment, Meeting Room
September 25th, 2003

In attendance: Janet Kovner, Lisa Brukilacchio, Nancy Hammett, Everose Schlüter, Dale Bryan, Paul Kirshen, Patrick Johnston, Lynn Weissman, Shana Horack, Kyron Rogers, Valerie Wencis, Mau Artinano.

Pizza Social- Pizza donated by the Watershed Center. The official meeting began at 5:15 pm. Lisa was selected to facilitate the meeting. Eve and Janet took notes for this meeting.

Introductions and welcome: New community member, Officer Patrick Johnston welcomed. Students from Roberta Sachs-Oster's TV for Social Change class were in attendance.

Announcements:

• Fall newsletter copies available at TIE and through MyRWA
• Annual MyRWA meeting Thursday, October 23rd at 6:30 pm at the Council on Aging Senior Center in the TAB Building (167 Holland Street in Somerville)
• First talk of MyRWA winter speaker series Tuesday, December 16th at 7 pm, speaker Mike Ryan, president of the Friends of the Fells, "Why save the Fells? A rich past & present." At Medford Public Library, 111 High Street in Medford.
• Dedication of Village Highland Park in Everett, October 19th from noon until 4 pm at the village landing behind the Mellon Bank on the Malden River.
• All invited to event to celebrate Molly Mead as the Lincoln Filene Professor, Tuesday, Sept. 30th from 4 to 6 pm in the Balch Arena.
• Dale Bryan is a recipient of the Experiential Education Higher Education Leader of the Year Award given by the National Society for Experiential Education. This award recognizes an NSEE higher education member who has demonstrated innovative uses of experiential learning in their institution. Congratulations Dale!
• The former Mystic Basin Team will be meeting Tuesday, Sept. 30th from 10 to 12:30 in Chelsea at Beth Israel Hospital. MA Riverways is hosting this first meeting.

MyRWA report: Nancy Hammett presented on MyRWA Status and Needs

• MyRWA's priority areas are currently identified as: Water quality, Flooding, Open Space and Recreation, Habitat, Watershed Awareness (Stewardship & Safety), Development / Smart Growth, and Environmental Justice. To reach goals in these areas, MyRWA has adopted a 4-pronged approach of: 1) Education and capacity building, 2) Research & assessment, 3) Advocacy, and 4) Direct Action. Spreadsheet provided detailing the specifics of each approach and the priority areas mentioned above. MyRWA's role can be characterized as a bridge between the needs of the watershed and research, or between the science and the understanding of the public. Nancy emphasized the realistic limitations of a staff of three to achieve significant improvement towards the overall goal of fishable and swimmable by 2010.
• Nancy stated one of the greatest needs currently is to improve internal communications, including between Tufts and MyRWA. Clarity about who is actually doing what would be very useful. Engaging Tufts faculty and staff with MyRWA efforts is considered a high priority. Discussion on how this might be achieved included joint applications for research grants and supporting academic realities by submitting research for publication in prestigious journals.
• Some specific areas of interest and/or concern were then raised:
  • Building capacity of local groups is another priority. This can be addressed through bringing community groups into the Steering Committee structure. Nancy wants to see MyRWA board representation as well to increase interaction with Tufts players.
• Questions of effective outreach were raised. How effective are newsletters, events? What content do you include in communications and who do you best get the word out? How do you reach people who are not particularly interested? This raises the issue of needing to go where people are. This linked to the important lessons from the River Use survey as emphasized by Lynn as she handed out survey forms and reinforced that many more people are using the river for swimming and fish consumption than previously assumed, raising public health concerns. Nancy mentioned the movie Mystic River is coming out soon and she is investigating opportunities this might offer. She has been working to get Globe coverage.
• Monitoring needs continue and could always use more volunteers, especially for wet-weather events. There is a distinct need to identify "hot-spots".
• Modeling of water quality. There is a significant data base which Prof. Durant has developed for the Mystic Action Plan that should allow for more much needed data analysis.
• Advocacy of water quality results. MyRWA sees its role as the prime advocate, but needs the science and prestige of Tufts research to support opportunities for advocacy.
• Watershed presence at regional meetings. MyRWA needs people to attend meetings as the eyes and ears of the watershed, ie local groups, development projects. MyRWA will create a running list of such projects.
• Direct action. Cleanups, invasive species removal, sediments (?). WaterWatch can help with some of these as part of reaching their goals at Tufts.
• Funding- MyRWA will keep a list for potentials and for possible SEP project funding from the EPA when these opportunities arise.

Summary of MyRWA goals for MWC involvement:

• Funding for specific projects with Tufts faculty and students, from the priority lists
• Joint funding to include MyRWA operating costs in realistic terms
• Research with an active community link would be most appropriate for MyRWA, with MyRWA providing outreach · Beware of "chasing the funding", need to locate funding to fit current needs for core programs (research & assessment, monitoring, advocacy, outreach & education)
• Identify resources at Tufts that can support other MyRWA needs (website design & maintenance, archives, equipment, students)
• Sponsoring and managing of joint projects
• Locating a key faculty member in departments at Tufts who can help distribute information re Mystic efforts/events.

Tufts courses/community service projects

Due to time considerations, Lisa very quickly reviewed the following list of students engaged in Mystic related efforts. This can be developed further in the next meeting if appropriate.

• Rusty Russell Environmental Law projects (~16)
• Roberta Oster-Sachs TV for Social Change- Mystic documentary (4-5)
• Tisch College students (7-8)
• investigating potentials in UEP Field Project, EXP 0048-F, AWSEAM placements
• others? Engineering?

Planning for 2003-2004 (next meeting will focus on Tufts role in MWC)

Goals discussed as:

• Identifying, selecting and orchestrating collaborative projects
• Building involvement in community and at Tufts University, including PR (suggestion to work with the PR or Communications dept Susan Eisenhower and/or Peter Sanborn at enews to promote with students what Tufts is doing with Mystic

Role of MWC members

• Networking and information sharing
• Shaping and influencing collaborative projects · Communication-internal and external

Questions/issues raised in this discussion

• What does it mean to be a part of the Collorative?
• Is the Collaborative about Tufts being a "good citizen?"
• Need to look at each project from multiple perspectives-MyRWA, Tufts, community groups to figure out what resources needed to be successful and communicate that.
• Tufts faculty liaison role. Would like Molly Mead, serving this capacity at present to be able to attend meetings as faculty outreach so key to goals of MWC

Other

• Archives status? Lisa will investigate.

Meetings

• Facilitation- Rotation suggested, but group elected Lisa to facilitate meetings.
• Minutes- TIE continues to offer to take minutes, Eve reports they have hired a new person who will fill this role.
• Content- Discussed having project updates and some announcements in advance of meeting date. Possibility raised of web postings. Janet offered to update listserve.
• Members- Lisa will prepare list of collaborative members and contact info. Mau would like the group to discuss students' roles at the next meeting. Dale raised a new student representative interest, Simon Goldberg, who was a River Institute participant. Recommended to invite him to attend next meeting. Nancy will invite a board member.
• Frequency- Once a month, suggested to select a day and week for consistency. Sheet sent around for time availability which suggested Wed at 2:30-4:30 best slot given current info.

Projects

Community Day- Janet and Lisa reported on invitation to participate in Tufts event on Oct 18th, on Medford campus for Somerville and Medford communities. Participation approved, Janet and Lisa will coordinate effort.

AWSEAM- Dale spoke of gathering momentum for Spring 2004 course using River Institute as model. Tisch College supported RI in first year, MACC and others for next three years, but not financially sustainable model as summer course. Positive meeting this week called by Molly Mead of Tisch College with Engineering and Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (CIS) Directors. CIS would sponsor the course. Students would be immersed in a watershed semester. They would work in community-based organizations for ~`5-20 hours a week, attend a weekly watershed restoration based seminar, and take 1-2 other related courses. Integrative events twice during the semester would strive to highlight the interdisciplinary nature of watershed work and expose more students to the Mystic efforts. MyRWA strongly supports the AWSEAM proposal!

Adjourned 7PM