Mystic Watershed Collaborative
Steering Committee Meeting
October 10, 2002, 9:30 am - 11:00 am

Attending: Julian Agyeman, Molly Anderson, Eleanor Bates, Lisa Brukilacchio, Dale Bryan (facilitator), John Durant, Rachael Edinger, Paul Kirshen, Janet Kovner, Heather Ross, Barbara Rubel, Lisa Waters

Next Meeting: Thursday, November 14, 9:30-11:00am (TIE)
Facilitator: Eleanor Bates

Announcements:

• MyRWA Annual Meeting – October 17, 2002 at 7pm, Tufts, Asean Auditorium

• Make a Difference Cleanup – October 26th

• Mass Water Watch is working with Adopt-a-Stream program, although an oil slick located on the Mystic near the foot bridge where the Mystic River parkway turns into Rt. 93 may delay progress.

EJAM:
Two interns have been recruited for the EJAM Project, Rachael Edinger and Heather Ross. The EJAM project will consist of three parts: training sessions, public forums, and a one-day summit. Heather will be working mostly on the training sessions and Rachael will be organizing the public forums. Subcommittees were formed to coordinate each section of the project. Publicity for the project will begin in early October to late November.

Training Sessions: The training sessions will be held on January 16th and tentatively on April 5th. The attendance goal is 40 people at each. There will be a mixture of elected officials, municipal representatives, activists, business leaders, and community people participating. The training will be offered once on a weekend and once during the week to accommodate everyone’s needs.

Public Forums: The title of the forums will be “Environmental Justice Across the Mystic: From Issues to Actions”. They will be held on 11/21, 2/11, and 3/12 from 7pm to 9pm. The forums will be upbeat, solution-based discussions where a guest speaker will talk about their ‘success stories.’ The moderators will be Veronica, Grace, and Julian. There will be three panelists, including a municipal representative and two community members. The locations for the forums will be announced at a later date although, the November forum will be located in the Chelsea/E. Boston area. Ten community action points will be developed at each forum. The Summit will then be based on these thirty action points.

Summit: The Summit will be held on April 26th (tentatively).

Support: EJAM requested that TIE assist in establishing work space for the EJAM interns in the TIE office that has a desk, bookcase, and computer. The phone will be a shared phone line between Mass Water Watch and EJAM and is in the process of being installed. EJAM encourages everyone on the MWC committee to attend all or most of the EJAM events. Currently, an EJAM logo is being designed although, they have requested assistance in developing flyers and brochures. Lisa B. will meet with the EJAM Interns to assist them. If anyone knows of any contacts for speakers, moderators, panelists as well as locations for the event then please contact Rachael Edinger. Janet will send a list of community organizations to Rachael.
EPA Watershed Initiative: The EPA Watershed Initiative was submitted on October 9th. This consists of solutions for improved retention and reuse of stormwater in the Mystic, particularly in the lower basin. The result will be working funds for projects that include several visible results and community outreach. The choices for MA watersheds will be chosen by November of 2002.

Funding: On October 2nd, Grace received a phone call requesting them to quantify the deliverables. They had two days to develop this information and submit it back to the Foundation. They were notified that they could only fund 25% of the project budget so, Molly determined other sources of in-kind income to rework into the budget. Janet will send a copy of the budget and rationale to the committee.

EMPACT: The website for EMPACT has not been launched yet. They would like it to be live ASAP. The more important issue to address is how to fund the project for next year.

Mass Water Watch: Four interns have been working on projects with Eleanor. Beth Meserve, education program coordinator, works on developing education curriculum and scheduling classes in K-12, and recruits and trains volunteers to present in classes. Caitlin Majocka (and Sarah Rhee), cleanup coordinator, plans all logistics for our river cleanups, recruits and trains volunteers both for logistics and the cleanup. Lisa Dobey, stream monitoring coordinator, plans Adopt-A-Stream events and recruits and trains volunteers to staff events, and will be putting together a report on our findings. Kari McIntyre, (freshman; potential Omidyar Scholar) media coordinator, does press advisories, press releases and letters to the editor, maintains/forms relationships with members of the press, can recruit and train volunteers to also work closely with the media. Chelsea Bardot, (freshman; potential Omidyar Scholar) is helping to pioneer a new aspect of our education program. She will be doing Project WET presentations in schools and after school programs, but then also building relationships with the teachers in order to return to those classes to give presentations on the Mystic River. Along with Beth and Eleanor and others, she will be developing and implementing a Mystic River curriculum this semester. to include: Elizabeth , Lisa, Cailyn, and Sarah. They are working on these projects. Eleanor has been giving presentations to classes and Omidyar Scholars about the program and upcoming potential projects. Eleanor will send out a copy of the information about the projects to the committee.

NSP-EPA Cooperative Agreement: Molly sent out a message to eight people requesting their interest in working on a project on the Mystic. David Gute and a team of CEE faculty did show an interest. This agreement was due on September 21st, although the deadline was not reached.

Rusty Russell’s Class: His class is rapidly progressing. Ten student projects have been developed in the Mystic. The class is an Environmental Law class with UEP. There is a good mixture of participants in the class to include graduate students and water professionals working with the state. Molly will send out a list of the projects to the committee.

New Time: The new time for the MWC Steering Committee meetings has been chosen. The MWC will meet on the second Thursday of each month from 9:30 – 11am at the TIE office. TIE will be purchasing parking garage tokens to give out to the members to avoid parking charges.

New Members: The MWC is still in need of two student representatives and a replacement for Susan Loucks. Katy was unable to become a member due to schedule conflicts. The MWC needs to invite students engaged in Mystic projects to the meetings. Paul and Eleanor researched into making Tufts Water Watch an official Tufts organization. Although in the process they discovered that Water Watch is already an official organization under the Leonard Carmichael Society. New leaders are emerging from Mass Water Watch that would be ideal candidates as new MWC members. Molly will send out an invitation to join the MWC to students involved with the Mystic asking them to write a small paper illustrating why they want to be a member of the MWC. Molly will email all of the responses to the committee members for review.

Read by the River: Last year the Read by the River event was rained out and moved in to the gym. The idea of having the event by the river has been abandoned in the past due to logistics. This group is interested in advocacy of literacy issues and do not have any true connection to the river itself. Dale is wondering if the readings could at least be about rivers. Eleanor will continue to pursue contacts possibly, Loren Bloom from the Hillel Center.

MWC Poster Session: A poster session will be held on Monday, October 28th to educate faculty on faculty/student partnerships affiliated with UCCPS. It will be located at the Aidekman Art Center in the Sculpture Court. This will be a large illustration on what the MWC is doing and the potential for faculty to get involved. It will also inform faculty about the MWC Liaison position. Please send comments and suggestions to Lisa Waters. A pdf file of the poster will be created and dispersed to all committee members to use in the future.

Omidyar Scholars: Janet has been acting as a Liaison with students in Lisa B’s class to find projects related to the work of the MWC. These projects will take place in Medford and Somerville. Janet contacted local citizen groups, schools, municipalities, and developed a series of nine projects. Janet gave a presentation to the classes about watersheds, MyRWA, and connections to the MWC. The response interested in watershed-related projects was minimal. One student chose the watershed project over Chinatown projects. This student will be working with local schools to create a community garden at Riverbend Park. The real question to address is why the students are showing a lack of interest in watershed related projects? Last year Omidyar Scholars also showed no response to working on watershed projects. To increase interests in watershed projects,

• the project descriptions may need to be targeted differently;
  
• the faculty need to be educated on these issues and support efforts to encourage these type of projects;
  
• speakers need to be invited from the community to talk to the Omidyar Scholars and the other two classes about watershed related issues;
  
• solicit to UEPP and CEE students to choose field projects on this subject;
  
• solicit to Environmental Studies students to get involved in internships dealing with the watershed; and
  
• make a connection with the faculty through upcoming poster session.

Throughout this process it was very difficult to find organizations that can offer supervision and structure. The most viable projects that will not be worked on this year could possibly be converted in internships with the River Institute. Another possibility is that the projects are redesigned to be used as UEPP Field Projects. Similarly, Dale and Janet will discuss the possibility that some could be revised into a spring internship project and fitted into his CIS internship seminar.

MyRWA Web Site: Josh, the former Web Master for the MyRWA web site, has resigned and is still awaiting his last paycheck of $450.00. The original funds to pay Josh came from Rob Hollister’s account that is now empty. Therefore, there was a request to the MWC committee to pay Josh the remaining $450.00 from the MWC budget. The MWC accepted to pay Josh this final disbursement.