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Project
Overview
Mystic River Watershed
Stormwater Management
Community Support
Overview of the Opportunity:
Two municipalities in the Mystic River watershed wili have the opportunity to work with an expert team (see below)
to discuss their iocal water resource challenges and develop the most cost effective, appropriate approaches for
improving stormwater management and other related practices.
They will work with the project team for six months, beginning this fall.
Municipalities will identify what water resources they most want to protect
or improve and the group will work to identify the most specific and
appropriate stormwater management actions. The priority outcome will be
helping each municipality develop a well-thought out plan with expert
technical assistance and creative strategies. This collaborative project will
also help the two municipalities make progress toward their future MS4
permit requirements.
Participating municipalities will be expected to commit a team of people
who work on water resource management and/or municipal operations to
engage fully in this joint learning opportunity between November and May.
This will include
approximately five
three-hour in-person meetings to be held in the municipalities, as
well as some in-between work.
The goal of the project is to help early adopter municipalities in the
Mystic River Watershed make substantial progress in thinking
through their nutrient management options,
particularly municipal stormwater management,
with a focus towards implementation. The
project will also focus on creating solutions to
local challenges and barriers to more effective
stormwater management. This project may
include work towards drought and flood
resilience, groundwater recharge, aesthetic
improvements, etc., depending on other
community water resource needs. This
approach can then serve as a model for other
communities in the watershed.
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Stormwater conceptual plans (source: BWSC)
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This project will pilot a new approach to addressing stormwater management in which regulators and technical experts
work collaboratively with community leaders to identify opportunities for innovative stormwater controls. Two
municipalities will work with the expert team to determine cost-effective and efficient ways to address stormwater
pollution within their borders. The team and the leaders of these motivated municipalities will collaboratively develop
strategic approaches and identify the technical support needed to effectively advance their water quality restoration
efforts and reduce nutrient pollution in the watershed, while maximizing co-benefits such as drought and flood resilience,
groundwater recharge, aesthetic improvements, etc.
Background
In 2016, the EPA, MassDEP and the Mystic River
Watershed Association (MyRWA), with substantial
support from the Massachusetts Water Resource
Authority (MWRA), began work on the Mystic River
Watershed Eutrophication Analysis (Eutrophication
Analysis) to better understand and address degraded
water quality. The freshwater portion of the watershed
faces multiple water quality impacts related to
eutrophication including excessive algal growth,
harmful cyanobacteria blooms and excessive native and
invasive aquatic plant growth. In addition to the
significant nutrient input from stormwater runoff from
impervious surfaces, other sources of nutrients from the
watershed include illicit sewer connections, combined
sewer overflows (CSO's), sanitary sewer overflows
(SSO's), and erosion and non-point source runoff. In
addition, the watershed has numerous water resource
issues related to uncontrolled stormwater runoff from
developed landscapes. Extensive areas of impervious
cover in the watershed are primary contributors to
water quality impairments, flooding and excessive low
flow conditions during droughts.
Example BMP and pollutant removal performance
The team of experts is interested in working collaboratively
with watershed communities to address these and other
important local water resource issues in an innovative, cost-
effective, and efficient way. The approach will be one of joint
learning and exploration. Participants from the project team
are committed to learning from the two selected
communities about the current situations on-the-ground
related to nutrient management, and the project team will
offer their resources and expertise to help the communities develop
options for improving stormwater management and get a head start on
compliance with MS4 permit. The reason for choosing two communities
rather than one is to make for more open discussion, enable all
participants to learn from each other, and build a group of collegial
experts in their local stormwater situations. A larger group may preclude
the ability for effective working sessions where all participate fully.
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Project Phases (to be refined with the two communities that are select*
Phase 1 - Planning (Oct) One or two people from each selected
community will work with the project team to refine the overall
approach and serve as a liaison to their community, get commitments of
participation, figure out the best meeting times and places, and
collaborate with the team on how to lay the groundwork for the best
possible project (likely by conducting some interviews or surveys to
gather information).
Phase 2 - Project Meetings (November - May) A handful of key leaders
(about 2-6) who work in some way on stormwater from each
municipality will participate in regular joint meetings with the project
team. As currently imagined, these meetings are likely to last 3 hours and
occur approximately every 6 weeks. These working sessions will include
time when the project team and representatives of both teams are
talking together to share information or ideas and time when the people
from the two municipalities are split and focus internally on their own
situation. They would alternate locations between the two
municipalities. Community participants will likely have to do some work
between meetings, as will the project team, possibly together.
Project meetings would be designed to work through the following
questions:
1)	What are municipal water resource management activities and
challenges? What are local and regional water resource
objectives?
2)	What stormwater BMPs are available and would make sense
here? How do they perform? What do they cost? What are their
maintenance needs? How can they provide additional benefits to
the community?
3)	What are the municipal (and broader regional) constraints and
barriers, including those related to funding, staffing, planning,
local ordinances, local approval process, physical site constraints,
etc.?
4)	What approach will each community use for moving forward
once they have identified some options they want to move
forward with? How can they most effectively communicate their
approach, and what workplan makes sense? How can we share
this information and promote learning among communities in
the watershed?
Phase 3 - Workplan Development (May-June) The representatives of
each municipality, with support from the project team, will draft a simple
workplan outlining how they intend to proceed on stormwater
management in the next few years, identifying promising sites or
techniques or opportunities and resources needed to move forward
successfully.
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Project Roles
This project involves people from many agencies and organizations filling distinct roles, as follows. The intent is for
everyone who participates to learn a lot from everyone else by listening and sharing real, meaningful information about
management challenges, financial situations, political realities, technical or modeling opportunities and more.
•	Conveners: responsible for funding this effort and providing guidance and technical support
o EPA Region 1: also responsible for managing process, logistics
o MassDEP
•	Technical and research support: responsible for presenting tools and running models to help the community
participants understand what is available to them and what is known about the watershed
o Mystic River Watershed Association, responsible for serving as a liaison to communities and
assist in consideration of possible BMPs.
o Eastern Research Group (ERG), responsible for providing assistance to the municipalities in
using the technical tools and providing some conceptual design work,
o UNH Stormwater Center, responsible for providing information to the municipalities concerning
innovative stormwater BMPs, including siting and maintenance considerations.
•	Facilitation: responsible designing project meetings with the project team, for facilitating meetings, and for
overseeing the full process
o The Consensus Building Institute
•	Community participants
o Up to 6 members appointed from each community. These should be professionals and
community leaders who work on stormwater, nutrient management, or related topics and who would
be involved in implementing any management changes. These participants are responsible for sharing
information (can be informal) about their individual community practices, such as staff resources,
municipal procedures, other challenges/complicating factors in stormwater management at their local
level. These participants are responsible for participating in the project from start to finish, coming to
meetings prepared, participating in good faith, and doing work between meetings as needed.
Note: this project does not include an organized public engagement effort for the broader public.
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