Today MassDEP  awarded $929,000 to 11 municipalities and water districts to assist them with “water conservation, demand management and other projects that will help to mitigate the ecological impacts of water withdrawals.”  The grants are part of the Sustainable Water Management Initiative, and an effort by the state to help towns comply with new permit requirements expected as a result of upcoming changes to Water Management Act regulations.  For more information about the grants: http://www.mass.gov/eea/pr-2013/swmi-grants.html

Due to a predicted storm – snow, wind, sleet, “wintry mix,” etc. beginning tonight (March 18) and continuing through tomorrow, we are postponing tomorrow’s Improved Stream Crossings Workshop and will reschedule it soon.

The Massachusetts Rivers Alliance and our partners are pleased to announce an upcoming series of  March workshops on improved stream crossings to be held in three western MA locations.  (The same agenda will be repeated three times).  Click to download the Stream Crossing Workshop Flyer. This is a critically important topic at the confluence of public safety, municipal economics, and wildlife habitat protection. Culvert failures as a result of recent severe storms have wreaked havoc in some areas, causing road failures, costing millions of dollars

Okay, so it’s not a policy update, but I finally got a chance to travel west, past Worcester, this summer, where I visited some rivers and met with some of the people who are looking out for them. Andrea Donlon and her daughter, Ursula, are passionate about the Connecticut River.  Andrea, who is a fierce and effective advocate for the river, works for the Connecticut River Watershed Council. The Connecticut, of course, has the biggest watershed in Massachusetts.  Upstream, it forms the divider between New

The Sustainable Water Management Initiative continues to move (slowly) forward…  The Mass Rivers Alliance’s Julia Blatt, along with Ian Cooke of the Neponset River Watershed Association, are participating on the Pilot Oversight Committee (which also includes two water supplier representatives and staff from EOEEA, DEP, DCR, and DFG). The state’s consultants are currently scrambling to collect information on the water supply systems and hydrologic conditions of the four pilot areas, and have set up meetings with the municipalities and watershed groups in these areas.  They

Against the backdrop of an unusual spring drought, the Sustainable Water Management Initiative (SWMI) is continuing to move ahead.  The dry weather and very low streams highlight the importance of curbing excessive, non-essential water use in order to sustain both our streams and our public water supplies. The Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs has posted all the comment letters it has received on the draft SWMI framework.  You can click on this link to read the framework and the letters.  The environmental community

For two years, state staff, environmental advocates, and water suppliers have wrestled with the question, “how much water should we leave in streams to keep them healthy – and how should this work under the state’s Water Management Act, the statute that regulates water allocation in Massachusetts?  After a seven-month hiatus, the state’s environmental agencies are reconvening the Sustainable Water Management committees to work on some remaining technical issues (with the technical subcommittee, on 1/17) and review the draft framework document (to be presented to

This just in – the Legislature’s Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee will hold a public hearing on dam legislation this coming Monday, March 14 at 11:00 A.M. in room B-1 in the Massachusetts State House. We invite you to testify IN FAVOR of the bill.  The dam bill is the version reported out by the Environment Committee last session and has been filed this session by both Senator Pacheco as Senate 367 and Representative Straus as House 265.  Bill text at: dam bill The

EOEEA is holding two public hearings – 12/16 from 1-3 in Boston, and 12/20 from 5-7pm in Springfield – seeking budget priorities for the state’s environmental agencies.  We encourage you to weigh in, either in person, or with written recommendations. Our recommendations are here: Alliance EOEEA FY12 budget recs.  Click here for info on today’s hearing in Boston: BudgetHearingNotice2012Boston(rev_ and here for info on Monday’s hearing in Springfield: FY12BudgethearingSpringfield.  To submit written comments (by December 27), click either link for EOEEA Secretary Ian Bowle’s address.

Thanks to all who attended yesterday’s very lively SWMI workshop; you can find the reports cited on our website under Our work/events as well as Peter Weiskel’s presentation.