 Welcome to a watershed moment, the community media program that celebrates the rivers and connected lands forming the natural circulatory system of our region. The health of these watersheds is intricately tied to that of the humans who live here and affect them. So we invite you to come along as we explore the natural landscape, observe the wildlife, and share the beauty minutes away from our homes and daily commutes. This series will introduce you to the organizations and to the passionate volunteers, organizers, recreationists, athletes, and scientists who work tirelessly to sustain and improve these watersheds. Welcome to a watershed moment. I'm Charlotte Pierce, the host, and we're here with our special guest Amber Christofferson. She's the Greenways Director for the Mystic River Watershed Association, and the Mystic Greenways Initiative that she'll be talking about will connect 25 miles of paths, improve hundreds of acres of park lands, and engage thousands of community members from the Mystic Lakes to the Boston Harbor. This high-quality network of greenways for active transportation and recreation will enhance climate resiliency, provide sustainable mobility, and improve physical and mental health outcomes for the communities along its path. So Amber, I know that the Mystic River Watershed Association formed the Greenways Program in 2016, and can you tell me a little bit more about why this program was started and the elements that are incorporated? Sure. Yeah, I'd love to. And thanks for the introduction. Yeah, and tell us a little bit about yourself too. Yeah, well, the story of the greenways has to do a little bit with my personal background. I am a long-distance runner and a cyclist, and I live near the Charles River, and that's where I train. You can run for dozens of miles along the river and never leave the edge. When I discovered the Mystic River, it was a disconnected network of paths. There were a lot of starts and stops and dead ends, and I thought to myself, why is this the case? At the same time, the Mystic River Watershed Association decided to start a new program, the Greenways Program, and just for those of you that are not familiar with that term, we think of greenways as half-parks and half-active transportation, so it's all about people-powered mobility and access to open space. And so when we started this, we thought, why doesn't the Mystic River have access to these open spaces and to the river in the same way the Charles and even the napons it has? So that's where we began, and it's fairly common knowledge that a lot of health outcomes are determined by where you live, and we wanted to make sure that people that live within the Mystic River communities have access to those amenities that make people healthier. When we started five years ago, we were thinking a lot about community health, now we're thinking a lot about two important topics, which is climate resiliency and equity. So we're working to direct resources to environmental justice communities, to reverse these inequities and access to open space and make safe places for walking and biking. Climate change is at the forefront, as we all know. We're working regionally through the resilient Mystic Collaborative to think about climate impacts at a regional scale. As you know, water, transportation, they don't see boundaries, they don't see town lines, so we're trying to bring together the 21 cities and towns for a cohesive- Can I ask you how many cities and towns? So 21 cities and towns, we're trying to make a cohesive network of parks so that there aren't dead ends and paths, and also look at mitigating heat aisle and effect and flooding, which also have regional components. Sure. And in the last year and a half we've had this pandemic, and I know I personally relied on the Mystic Parks to walk my dog to get out, and did you find a lot of people were using this system more during the pandemic? Yeah, absolutely. First of all, urban parks are an essential part of 21st infrastructure. It's not a nice to have, parks are critical, and the pandemic just made that even more clear. Massachusetts State Parks, the ones that are managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation, saw a 300% increase in usage, particularly as several other private parks were closed, those parks remained open, and people flocked to them. I noticed that. So, which also creates other issues and trash and maintenance, and we're hoping that the state continues to invest more, not just in creating and transforming new parks or existing parks, but creating new ones and making sure there's long-term maintenance and plan. Right, cool. Yeah, I mean it was really a good mental health outlet to have during the last year and a half. And that was what I was saying, you can be safe to recreate outside, you can social distance outside, so it became such an important part of our communities. Exactly, and maybe we can put the map on the screen and we can show people what we're talking about. Can you tell us a little more about the state of the projects and the Greenways program and what, you know, a few of the highlights from those? Sure, yeah. So, of the 25 miles when we began in 2016, about 13 of those miles were complete with a few miles in progress, and in progress essentially means that the path or park is somewhere in the planning, design, or construction phase. So, that can be a long period of time, but it means there's something happening to create a new project. As of 2021, which is five years later, we've completed 16 miles and we have seven miles in progress. So that's, we feel like really great about that outcome and where we're going and the momentum and demand for these spaces. We've also helped to raise funding, and in the last five years have raised $7 million for capacity, design, and engineering, and capital funding, which is kind of the three components of how you get these projects built. And do you have a big event, or do you have corporate sponsors that come in? Yeah. We have many sponsors that are corporations, state grants, federal grants. We do a lot of partnering with agencies and municipalities. So we want to involve all kinds of stakeholders, from the community to business, to agency and state. Sounds like it's going very well. I mean, that's a great progress and the funding is essential, I'm sure. But could you just highlight a couple of these and give us a sense of how you work, you know, how you look at the big picture, then you have to implement the details. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. The vision is somewhat simple. It's just connecting all of these spaces along the river and implementation is much difficult, more difficult. I like to joke that it's like I'm working on ten different puzzles and they all have lots of pieces that work towards completing it. I'm going to talk about a few projects. The first is Maldon River Works, which is on the Maldon River. It's part of the Maldon River Greenway, which is a plan we did in 2017. And this is a five-acre parcel on the Maldon River in Maldon. And it's going to create a new waterfront park in Maldon. Yep, it's where there's that little gray dot there. And we're going to redesign the Department of Public Works, which is onsite, and carve out a public space for a park along the river. So we think those two go together. A lot of times people think a PW can't be next to a park. But actually, they're the ones that are going to maintain the park. They're the ones that are responding to climate resiliency issues. So we think it's actually a great opportunity. And right now the site has a lot of contamination and it's not serving the river well. So by putting in this new acre and a half park, we're going to have a new boat house, a river walk, native plantings. And at the core of this project is equity and resilience. We have a steering committee of local communities of color that are driving this project and created the design. And we want to make sure that it's climate resilient from a flooding perspective, heat perspective. And again, like investing in the Department of Public Works. Not trying to displace that but saying let's support the people that are maintaining our city and maintaining our park space and making sure that site is functioning well environmentally. That spirit of collaboration is just critical. There are half a dozen partners, Friends of the Maldon River, MIT's a partner, the City of Maldon's a partner, Mystic River Watershed Association. There's probably a few I've missed, but it's just on that one project. We will put them in our notes about the episode if you want to include anything as far as- Yeah, and you've raised about a million dollars in funding to get to a 75% design and we're going through permitting and we're hoping to start construction in 2023. Well, that's coming up soon. Yeah. And then you have the Mystic River Pedestrian and Bicycle Bridge in Somerville. Yeah, so this is a really critical regional gap in the network. The Northern Strand Trail I like to describe as the minute man of the North. The Northern Strand just saw millions of dollars invested by the state to connect 11 miles from Everett to Lynn all the way to the North Shore. This bridge is where that path ends and then we'll connect people over the Mystic River into Somerville and then into Boston. So it's the connector of all North Shore communities. It's the off-road connector with Boston. It's also one of the biggest missing gaps in the east coast greenway, which is a many thousand mile greenway along the whole east coast. And it will be like bike access along that whole thing? Yeah, it will be a bike. It sounds like a long distance bicycle person might be yesterday. Exactly. And it serves both short and long term travel because it's just people that want to get from Everett to Somerville or vice versa. Well, a lot of times in that area, a bicycle is an easier or faster way to get around. And I think people are realizing they'd rather be on a bicycle and get there quicker than sitting in traffic. Exactly. It also will connect to the assembly row orange line. So similar in a similar way that the Minuteman connects to Alewife and it becomes this kind of hybrid transit with bikeway transportation network. So that's really exciting. That's 75% designed as well. There's a federal grant out right now. We're waiting to hear back to see if we'll get some money from the federal side of things. That's a much, that's a very large project. I don't want to quote the price incorrectly, but around 30, 40 million. Wow, yeah. Well, so best of luck and that one. And then we have a little one here in Wellington Park in Arlington. We're an Arlington community media right now. So we wanted to ask you about that. What's going on? So Wellington Park is along a stream in Arlington called Millbrook, which is just a stone's throw away from here. Millbrook is a several mile corridor that empties into the Mystic Lakes. And it has a really interesting history within Arlington as a mill town. There were seven or eight different mills that went through there right now. It's kind of a hidden waterway because part of Millbrook is above ground, part of it's piped underground. So we've been working with the town to increase access to Millbrook, improve the ecological quality and try to address some of the flooding concerns with Millbrook, which we know there are many. Yeah, it does swell up. Yeah, yeah. Right now we're finishing up our second phase of construction for Wellington Park, which is a town dome park off of Grove Street where there's a number of tennis courts. So all of our work is kind of behind that. Used to be overrun by fencing, invasive species. We cleared those out. Millbrook can now walk along Millbrook, we put in a boardwalk of rain gardens being built right now. We're working with the local artists to do a natural play area for kids, tons of native plantings. We also have a flood storage area that absorbs flooding from Millbrook when there's storm events. So we're thinking all of these components are coming together as far as recreation access, you know, walking and biking, flood resiliency, ecological quality with more native plants, less invasive plants. So we're excited about that project and it's great to see. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm going to go check out some of these areas you've been talking about, but it seems to me like, you know, you need the detailed people and then you need the vision, you know, you need to have those things kind of working in tandem. And can you just go through some of the guiding principles that you use in realizing this vision for the Greenway? Sure, yeah. There's three ways we think about our work. I've touched on some of them. The first is that we are trying to catalyze projects to be built to get to that 25 miles and the way that we do that is we apply for grants, we bring in funding to try to get initial concept design and engineering going so that we start the path towards implementation. The second thing that's really key is engaging and empowering communities, making sure there's public support, but also hearing from folks, what do you want to see here? What's a good park for you, for your families, for your friends? What are some mobility challenges you have? So that's important. And then the third thing is also just very hugely critical, partnering with cities and towns and agencies within Massachusetts, because we certainly cannot do it alone. So, you know, we're trying to connect those community voices with landowners and that side of things. Got it, yeah. And I mean, there must be different people in your organization. Can you just mention a few of them that you work with that have different skills and you mentioned someone who's sort of the vision person and was interested in that? Yeah, yeah. So we have a small but mighty team. We have a development team, which is essentially our fundraising, so helping us bring in grants, helping to fund my time and other folks' times. I work with community and engagement staff members. So they're helping me to get out to meetings, host public meetings, do events, do rides, all of these things that connect us to residents on the ground. And then I work with a number of folks in our climate resiliency department, because again, it's like climate resiliency is parks, like parks, trees. That is going to mitigate flooding. It's going to provide shade in the summer. It's absolutely critical to being climate resilient. So those are some of the folks I work with. And you have a large volunteer component, too? Absolutely. So can we just call up the Mystic Association and volunteer? Yeah, we have a volunteer page. You can sign up to get involved. We have a lot of stewardship activities between April and October, where you can get out and actually help pull invasive species, clean up the parks. We also have volunteers that count fish. I haven't even talked about the hairy migration that happens in the Mystic. Yeah. Maybe that's another. Andy. Andy Hirsina. Hirsina, he was on our. First episode, and he's like, he's, you know, so articulate. Oh yeah, he has a wealth of knowledge. And he just, he loves those ill-wifes. Yeah, yeah, well I like to say that Greenways is similar to the environmental work that Mystic Rivers has been doing for decades, you know, which is like, you know, sometimes environmental work was narrowly focused on creating habitat for fish, for birds. And I'm saying with Greenways, it's the same thing. You want to create a place where people want to be. You have to have benches. You have to have shading. There has to be safe paths for people to walk and bike. Yeah. Otherwise people won't come out. It's the same thing with the fish and the birds. So we're trying to support the wildlife and the people of the watershed to. Got it. Yeah. And make the most. So as far as the next couple of years, like what are like four main things that you want to see accomplished? Yeah. Well, I think the projects that I spoke about Malden River Works, the pedestrian bridge, those are huge priorities for us that we hope can get funded and built. We have a number of other waterfront projects. There's four projects that come to mind. One you can visit today, which is River Green Park in Everett. It's right off the minute. Sorry, not the minute man, the Northern Strand Trail. Got it. That was recently we're doing a whole shoreline restoration. There's new paths along the river. This is all as of two years ago prior to that. This was owned by GE and there were airplanes made on site. So people have not had access to the Malden River in Everett for over 100 years until two years ago. So you can get out today to go to River Green. There's like athletic fields. There's pavilions. There's benches. There's walking trails. So that's really exciting. The other project that's open or sorry, complete but not quite open is what we're calling the Sea Wall Project, which connects Draw 7 Park in Somerville to Route 99 in Charlestown. It bridges the Somerville-Charlestown line city of Boston. That is a really exciting project that has been in the works for many years. A lot of these projects are probably five to seven-year timelines. So when something gets done, you're really excited. One you had mentioned was the Clippership Connector. I'm not sure what that is. Yeah, the Clippership Connector. That was the main project I started on when I began here in 2016. I actually kind of was involved with it before that. So it's been six years. It's referencing back to the history of the Clippership ships that were built on the Mystic River in Medford. So this is going to connect Medford Square with the rest of the path system downstream towards McDonald's Park. It's only 0.4 miles, but it's very complicated with land ownership and contamination. But once that's done, there's going to be 10 miles of contiguous riverfront access. Will there be a museum? Yeah, I know. We need a museum to commemorate all the work we did on it. But that was another example of partnerships were key. We worked with the state DCR. We also worked with local groups from Medford, the Bicycle Committee, WACMEDFORD, our organization to do the community outreach and try to get the funding and all these pieces. And before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you, all this community collaboration and all these town meetings you have to go to. Is there any like, do you ever have like just really big opposition to something you think about or what you want to do? You know, not often, because people are clamoring for more paths, for more parks, especially in the late of COVID. Everyone realizing the magic of being outside, in addition to just it being safe in the pandemic context. You know, every now and then you kind of have someone that lives right by the path and they're a little hesitant to have more traffic here in their house. But almost every case of someone being concerned about that, once the path or the park is in, they're like, oh, now I have access to it because I live right here. I like to count. So part of my commute is I bike from Cambridge to Arlington and I go up the Minuteman path and I like to count. So from Alewife to Kickstand Cafe, essentially, like, you know, center of town, I like to count to see how many people have created gates from their backyards to the Minuteman. Because all a lot of those people did not want the Minuteman path. And now they're like psyched that they're on the Minuteman path. So I think it's just sometimes. And it seems like the industries too, you know, they realize the sort of community value, the public relations, if you will, you know, value of supporting something that's so positive. Right. Right. In fact, Minuteman's kind of been a victim of its own success. It's so crowded now. I know. People go so fast. I know. So it's that's another thing we're trying to think about. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. And finally, before we close up, can you tell me what your favorite place to bike or walk along the Mystic Greenway system? Yeah, one thing that's a favorite place, but also kind of a secret place. It's not exactly secret, but a lot of people don't know about it is the Maldon River. I talked about two projects on the Maldon. The Maldon River is three and a half miles of shoreline between Medford, Everett and Maldon, almost equally shared. And what makes it really unique, it's one of the few riverfront path systems that's not next to a highway like Sturro Drive 93. So it's quiet and there's quite a bit of wildlife. You can see on the Maldon River, there's wetlands. The only downside is it doesn't completely have contiguous access. We're working on that. OK. About 75 percent of it is open. Sometimes you have to kind of go back to the street and come back. It also runs alongside the Northern Strand Trail. So from there, you can get all the way up to the ocean on an off road path. That's definitely one that I would like to check out. Yeah. I'll take your advice on that. Well, thank you so much. Yeah. We have we will continue this series. And we'll have you back. Any of your scientists, you know, people like that. We'd love to ask and explore all aspects of of the watersheds, which are the pretty much the circulatory system of our lives. Exactly. Exactly. Well put. Thank you so much. All right. Nice having you. Yeah. Thanks for having me.