Protecting Water Resources: The Massachusetts Water Resources Research Center
Paula Rees, Director
The Massachusetts Water Resources Research Center aims to make New England water safer with the help of community volunteers and university faculty researchers. As one of 54 centers based across the United States with seed funding from the U.S. Geological Survey, the UMass Water Center, based in The Environmental Institute, is working to become a more active player in Massachusetts water research and policy, according to Director Paula Rees. “We’d like to increase our ability to serve the needs both of the faculty and the campus, and of the state in terms of water needs,” she says. “[We want] to increase our ability to serve as a cohesive role between disciplines and between the campus, other campuses and state needs.”
In one project begun in 2001, Rees has been sampling and compiling data from the Blackstone River to evaluate water quality. With the data collection phase now complete, Rees and the Water Center team are using the information to create a model of the river dynamics. “The real purpose of the Blackstone monitoring and modeling is to create a tool that we can play with to say, ‘ok, what’s going to happen in the basin in the future?’” Rees says. The contaminants affecting the Blackstone River include bacteria and nutrients and come from both point- and non-point sources. Point source pollutants flow from a known location, such as a waste water treatment facility, and must be reported as they are regulated under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. Non-point sources enter the river over long stretches by means of storm water run-off from parking lots, suburban lawns, forests, and other sources more difficult to identify. A combination of these two pollutant sources has compromised the Blackstone River to the point where it is not considered safe by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection for swimming or fishing. Rees and her team hope their model will help them identify ways to bring the river up to a Class B category - fishable and swimmable.
Currently, the model is being calibrated for a number of parameters, including nutrients, which will allow the team to make the virtual conditions mimic reality. “Through the model we are trying to recreate the physical environment as much as possible, so we utilize as inputs to the model such as actual rainfall that has occurred, observed air temperatures, evapotranspiration, and land use characteristics. These model inputs allow us to simulate non-point sources, which we combine with what we know about point source loads. ” Rees says. Once the model is calibrated, the team will be able to input various pollutant load reduction options to determine the best course of action for river clean up. “If we reduce point sources by this much here, what happens in the river?” she asks. “If we reduce non-point sources by this much, what happens in the river? Ultimately we are concerned with the health of Narragansett Bay – the Blackstone is a major source of freshwater to the bay.” Changes in point source pollution levels would come from regulations on waste-water treatment facilities and other businesses along the river. Some facilities have reduction projects coming online. Others are challenging more stringent effluent restrictions, since the construction needed to reduce point source pollution can be costly. The Water Center’s model can help determine the cost-effectiveness of these various controls. “As you reduce point sources that are fairly high, you see visible improvements in the river - generally a nice, steep trend initially,” Rees says. “But at some point, as you approach the limit of technology, further reductions in point sources have less of an impact on the river for every dollar that you spend.” At this plateau, Rees says, it’s time to start focusing on non-point sources. One of the Water Center’s efforts to help facilitate non-point source reductions is the Massachusetts Storm Water Technology Evaluation Project (MASTEP). Jerry Schoen, a Water Center staff member, is leading the evaluations of studies that have been done on storm water treatment systems. Since performance effectiveness studies vary in their reliability, Schoen and his team are developing a comprehensive guide detailing the validity of the studies themselves. Another project evaluates stormwater routing and treatment models to identify optimal management strategies for different situations. Eventually, a town aiming to install a storm water management system could use guidance provided by the Water Center when choosing a system with the ideal size and function for a certain area at the minimum cost. The Center is currently helping to review a modeling system with these capabilities, developed on a pilot basis to reduce nutrient loading in the Charles River.
The Water Center is working to bring some of these cost effective methods to the University as well. “We’d like to bring things together on campus that wouldn’t normally have been brought together,” Rees says. Currently, UMass uses traditional non-point source collection and treatment methods like storm sewers and in-line treatment. Rees and the Water Center would like to assist in updating its management systems. For example, systems like porous pavement and rain gardens could be used to filter storm water in an aesthetically pleasing manner.
Schoen is also managing the Watershed Community Initiative, an effort that uses information technology and social networking tools to make science more engaging and accessible to grade schoolers, college undergrads and community organizations. In one project with the Athol School District, children create podcasts to share their field work discoveries with fellow students and community members. In another project, the Center is collaborating with the Center for Educational Software Development to develop virtual tours of the Connecticut River Watershed, accessible on desktop and handheld computers.
Another project, headed by Marie Françoise Walk, is the Water Center’s Acid Rain Monitoring Project. The project started in 1983, when the effect of acid rain on New England’s forest ecosystems caught the attention of legislators. While the monitoring project has scaled back since its height in the 1980s, the Water Center currently collects data biannually on the impacts of acid rain on streams and lakes across the state. The number of sampling locations has changed, but the main goal of monitoring the pH and alkalinity of Massachusetts lakes and streams has provided an invaluable look at trends in New England. Each year, 50 volunteers collect water samples across the state from 153 designated water bodies and bring the samples to volunteer laboratories for pH and alkalinity analysis. Of those 153 samples, 26 are also sent to the Water Center’s Environmental Analysis Lab (EAL) for color, cation, and anion analysis. The ARM long-term data set is of interest to both the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and outside groups. One use is for identifying maximum acceptable acidity values for New England.
The Center is also participating in a multi-state volunteer monitoring effort along the Connecticut River. As data is collected, information is posted on an interactive Web site. Along with the aforementioned virtual tours, “the water quality web site is an attempt to blend traditional Citizen Science activities with information technology advances that are changing how people seek and respond to information,” Rees says. The EAL is put to use for other Water Center projects, as well. Through the Massachusetts Water Watch Partnership, for example, volunteer groups can send samples from their streams or ponds to be analyzed for various nutrients. The Partnership also provides quality control samples and guidance documents to ensure water is sampled correctly. EAL is also open to University researchers in need of water analysis.
Since 2003, the Massachusetts WRRC has held an annual conference to provide an interdisciplinary forum for scientists, practitioners, and policy makers to discuss critical water research, foster greater collaboration among scientists and practitioners, and strengthen the connection between research, extension, and policy.
In the future, Rees says the Water Center will be more involved in climate change issues such as providing necessary data to assess existing policies, identifying areas needing improvement, and assisting to implement new policies. “[We’re] trying to bring up to speed some of the traditional things that we do in water quality monitoring and modeling so that it fits those changes in societal expectations.”