Project Title: Water Quality Restoration Program Roadmap
Watershed: Ipswich River
Municipalities: Middleton, Danvers
This project aims to expedite the ability of communities and watershed organizations to achieve measurable water quality improvements and protections. The project undertakes a pilot implementation to test the methodology under ‘real world’ conditions in PIE-Rivers watersheds, in order to produce the best possible, self-directed Water Quality Restoration process to be useful to a range of possible users interested in achieving water quality protections and improvements at the local and watershed level.
The short-term goal of DER’s Water Quality Restoration Program (WQRP) is to build the capacity of nongovernmental organizations and communities to effectively reduce or prevent water quality impairments. The Program’s longer-term mission is to foster and support significant local and watershed-wide water quality focused actions to restore and protect the ecological health of aquatic systems and the benefits these systems provide to natural and human communities.
In 2018-2019 DER and its consultant developed a Framework to assist organizations and communities to define specific water quality goals, build capacity, evaluate progress toward achieving reductions in and prevention of water quality impairments through the development of an individualized action plan (the WQRP Roadmap).
The purpose of this current phase of work (2020-2021) is to implement the Ipswich River Water Quality Roadmap and assist DER and their consultants with the development of the updated Framework as needed. This effort includes administering a residential survey, which was then used to develop a campaign to link residential lawn care practices with the larger source of stormwater pollution. Additional technical monitoring is being conducted to measure on-the-ground improvements to water quality associated with this campaign.
This project will conclude in June, 2021. Check back then for final project deliverables and updates.