Bearing witness is the highest calling for a journalist.
On a sunny July day in 1997, Middlesex News staff photographer Paul Kapteyn and I paddled a canoe down the upper Charles River, from a Millis boat launch area off Route 109 to the dam in South Natick. It was a perfect New England summer day. Pushed along on a historically low flow for The Charles, even for a summer month, the paddle-powered journey was punctuated superlatively with sweeping river-basin views, a colorful array of wildlife, and an environmental crisis unfolding slowly but surely all around us.
The suburban way of life in the MetroWest region of Greater Boston is environmentally damaging and draining the upper Charles River watershed.
Sprawling subdivisions arrayed with a variety of impervious surfaces -- from shingled roofs to asphalt driveways to storage sheds -- thwart the recharging of aquifers that thousands of suburban homes rely upon for drinking water wells. Fertilizers poured on suburban lawns wash nitrogen-rich storm runoff into The Charles, fueling growth of invasive plants such as purple loosestrife on the riverbanks (photo above) as well as weed and algae blooms in the river. After two decades of suburban-sprawl damage, the boat launch area where Paul and I slipped our 17-foot shiny silver aluminum canoe into a 40-foot-wide stretch of the The Charles headwaters is now choked with vegetation (photo below).
'A River Runs Dry' by Christopher Cheney, Middlesex News, Aug. 3, 1997
Development Threatens Rejuvenated Charles(Editor's note: This story online exclusively at bullworkofdemocracy.blogspot.com and sadly prophetic.)
The mills that made the upper Charles River an industrial dumping ground for 100 years are gone, but rapid development near its banks could suck it dry.
A month-long Middlesex News investigation found the river has recovered from its polluted past. A six-hour canoe trip from Millis down to the South Natick dam showed the river supports an abundance of wildlife, including great blue heron, muskrat and thousands of eastern painted turtles.
But more and more public wells, along with paving, construction and sewer projects could dry out the headwaters of The Charles in summer, according to Robert Zimmerman, executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association. Such projects are blocking water from getting to the network of aquifers that feed the river, he said.
"I can't imagine a more definitive scenario for a water crisis," he said.
Interviews with watershed association staff, state officials and people who live next to the river found that it faces a new, insidious environmental threat from growing towns like Bellingham, Franklin, Holliston, Medway, Millis and Norfolk.
The latest threat comes after years of struggling to clean up a waterway that was so polluted fabric dye left a telltale tint on those who dared to swim in it.
Today, round green duckweed petals, not much larger than the head of a pin, line the sides of the river like billions of alfalfa sprouts suspended from the water's surface.
A feast for waterfowl, the duckweed also camouflages eastern painted turtles poking thumb-sized snouts through the floating green blanket, when they're not sunning themselves on the muddy riverbanks.
Dozens of great blue herons, stork-like birds with wing spans around 6 feet, make the river their home. But a new environmental disaster is on the horizon.
State regulators and those who live on the river say they may soon be able to walk across a dry river bed in the summer if town planners and developers fail to acknowledge the limits of the river.
And it's not just a matter of duckweed, herons or turtles, which would be wiped out if the river ran dry.
Dozens of public wells that draw drinking water from the aquifers -- underground pools of water linked to the upper Charles and its tributaries -- are threatened. If the aquifers are in danger of running dry, the state may make them off limits to well use. Twenty-three such wells in Franklin, Medway, Millis and Norfolk could be shut down in summer months when there water is most needed.
Communities would be forced to compete with neighboring towns for a shrinking suppl of water, driving up the price of a shower, a shave, a drink, cooking, cleaning and flushing.
Antonio D'Alessandro has lived near the banks of The Charles in Medway for 45 years and said it has been receding for the past 15. "My kids used to use a rope swing and jump into the water," he said. "Now, you couldn't make a splash down there."
A 1996 state Department of Environmental Protection study says the aquifers that supply Franklin are stressed to the point where future resource planning is essential.
The DEP's Water Management Program has identified the town, one of the state's fastest growing communities, as an example of how uncontrolled growth threatens the upper Charles, which stretches from Echo Lake in Hopkinton to Boston Harbor.
A drought in the summer of 1995 dried up three Franklin tributaries of The Charles -- Mine Brook, Miscoe Brook and Dix Brook.
Despite the DEP study, despite the dry streams, despite the rope swing that now sits over hard ground instead of a swimming hole for children, a consultant who advises Franklin on water issues said the threat that development poses to the upper Charles is overstated.
"There was no observed long-term damage to wetlands during (the drought) period," said Ted Morine. "They all dried up totally and yet the wells sited in those valleys were able to pump during the three-month drought."
"They have the ability to withstand complete dry periods and come back unharmed," he said.
Town Administrator Wolfgang Bauer said Franklin's growth can be accommodated by water within the town's border's. "We've got plenty of water, it's just a matter of drilling the wells to tap into it," he said.
Lealdon Langley, manager of the DEP's water management program, said Franklin officials are over-simplifying the situation. He is taking a hard look at requests for new wells from Franklin, Holliston, Millis, Medway and Norfolk.
The Water Management Act requires us to balance environmental interests with the interests of economic development. I believe it's time for Franklin to live up to those obligations," he said.
"The state is not telling Franklin how to develop its community," Langley said. "What the state is saying is that under the law we will protect the quality of life."
The increasing number of public wells, combined with a building spree in boom towns along the river and expansion of a sewage treatment plant in Medway has cut the flow of water in the upper Charles to dangerous levels, according to the Charles River Watershed Association's Zimmerman.
Construction and paving block rainwater from trickling down into the aquifers.
A proposed expansion of the Charles River Pollution Control District plant in Medway, which would handle sewage from towns including Bellingham and Holliston, would also decrease the flow of water into the river, according to Zimmerman.
It is better to have water flow into the river from properly functioning septic systems in Bellingham and Holliston than have it redirected farther downstream to the plant in Medway, he said.
"I think we're already crossed the line and unless we go back and pay attention to groundwater recharge, we'll be in in a serious situation," Zimmerman said.
(Editor's note: The Charles River's perennially dry summer-season riverbed in Millis, shown in the recent Google Earth photo below, is an alarming new finding of this bullworkofdemocracy report. In the summer of 1997, this stretch of The Charles was open water and great for canoeing. The impact on wildlife over the past two decades is unimaginable, with countless thousands of animals likely lost in the mass habitat disruption.)
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