 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. So today we're talking about climate change. Climate change intensifies rainstorms, meaning rainier winters and hotter summers and bigger storms. The Mystic River Watershed Association launched a formal climate program in 2018 to help us learn to adapt to these changes and address how different groups of people are affected by these changes locally. And we are lucky to have with us today Julie Warmser, a senior policy advisor at Mystic River Watershed Association, and the person who started and is leading the climate resilience efforts at the Mystic River Watershed Association, including the 20 municipal wide resilient Mystic Collaborative. Hello Julie. Welcome. Hello Charlotte. Prior to joining the Mystic River Watershed Association, Julie was instrumental in drawing attention to Boston's need to prepare for coastal flooding from extreme storms and sea level rise as the executive director of the Boston Harbor Association. Julie holds a BA in biology from Swarthmore College and an MPA from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, which is also my alma mater master's program. Oh great. Yeah. So we have that in common. So I'm Charlotte Pearson, I'm the producer of a watershed moment. Welcome to our viewers and Julie, can you tell us a little bit about your most recent work with Mystic and then we'll get into some questions that we have from, that we've come up with and from our viewers. Sure. Thank you so much for having me. I am very, very lucky to be working with the 20 communities in the resilient Mystic Collaborative, which stretches from Revere, Winthrop, Boston, all the way up to Wuburn and Reading. And I would have to say this is the joy of working at a local and regional level is our colleagues across our cities and towns are just tremendous people to work with. And together we work on regional climate resilience projects. Fantastic. So do you go to a lot of like community government organizations to talk about the climate resilience initiatives? Well, let me explain how we do this. So in 2018, the executive director of, we call ourselves Myra, just as a short, he and I went and talked with about 50 thought leaders in the watershed and said, help us understand two things. What are those climate challenges that you have, whether it's too much rainfall or coastal flooding or drought or heatwaves, what are those challenges that you can't solve within your own community boundaries? And then how could a collaborative watershed help you? Because the challenge in Massachusetts, as you know, is we don't have regional government. We got rid of most of our counties about 20, 25 years ago. And as a result, it's really, really hard to plan for regional challenges like flooding. So these thought leaders, most of whom were senior planners and engineers from cities and towns, they said, well, we have enough support from the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission in terms of training and planning. We want to do stuff on the ground to make us safer. And we have no staff who can, whose task it is to talk with our neighboring communities. Can you help us do that? So our first three years together, we figured out what we wanted to work on. We did data gathering and research at a watershed level of basically where are we most at risk from flooding and heat, coastal flooding. And then now we are getting a few hundred million dollars worth of projects together to actually make people safer. Now that we have the federal infrastructure money, we have a real opportunity to make major progress this year. Well, that's fantastic. We're so lucky. I mean, people, if it's not right in their face, like, you know, rain falling on their head or something, you know, it's hard to kind of get your head around as a citizen, you know, what all the stuff, the forces happening around us mean. We have just wanted to see if you could detail a little bit about the climate impacts you see on the mystic watershed. So this, you know, a few examples of the specific things that, that are evidence of this larger forces. Absolutely. Well, any of these impacts are essentially extreme weather interacting with existing infrastructure. So when we were little, which was not forever ago, rainfall used to be essentially every three years, every three days and more of a drizzle than a downpour. With our weather getting hotter, we're ending up with much more intense rainfall, including weather, including winter rainfall, not snow anymore. And then in between no rain at all. So we don't get drizzle every three days, we might get a few thunderstorms that remains of a hurricane or a winter nor'easter that brings a ton of rain very intensely over a short amount of time. That causes water to flood into our basements, into the subway, come out of our stormwater systems. Sometimes that causes combined sewer overflow systems to dump raw sewage into the mystic. So that's a big issue is that our stormwater system was not designed for these periodic intense rainfall. So we're getting more street flooding. The other thing is that hotter, a hotter earth is melting glaciers and also expanding ocean water. So we're getting more intense coastal storms on top of a higher sea level. So our sea level has raised more than a foot since the Industrial Revolution started. And our storms are more intense, so we're seeing more saltwater flooding of our coastline. And then finally, we are a blizzard culture. We know what to do when we get a foot of snow and people don't tend to die and our houses don't tend to collapse and people know to stay home and stay off the roads. We don't really know what to do during heat waves, though. We're not used to having a week over 90 degrees. That's not what we had when we were little. And so we're still learning how to protect people and stuff from extreme heat because we're not used to it. Well, one thing that affects me behind me is my rowing club and the docks, you know, the combined sewer overflow is, it shuts us down, basically, when we, and people, you know, I still go out sometimes, but my friends who have sensitive health issues and they don't want to get that kind of water on them, it just, it's a higher risk. So, you know, it just kind of seems like it trickles down, so to speak, to, you know, to very specific impacts. I think that's the biggest difference between trying to prevent climate change and trying to protect people from climate change is that preventing climate change is a global challenge all about greenhouse gas emissions, energy conservation. But climate resilience is very, very place-based. It's like, is my basement going to flood? Am I overheated? What's my electricity bill? Are there street trees on my street? And so it's very place-based and affects people in really different ways. Well, that's a great question. How are different people impacted differently? Yeah, I mean, that's one of them, like my friend, you know, and there are many people at the rowing club who have issues like that, but we also find, you know, a higher growth of weeds, which affects our enjoyment of rowing and stuff like that. For sure. For sure. Well, I think the biggest thing is climate resilience has a lot to do with class and has a lot to do with social networks. So it's a question of are you able to get out of harm's way? And the people who tend not to be able to get out of harm's way are people who are low income. And because of structural racism in the United States, they tend to be more new Americans, people who don't speak English, and people who are people of color, more than white folks. Not that there are not white folks who are poor, but disproportionately poor folks are people of color. And so a lot of it has to do with housing. Are you able to afford air conditioning? Does your house flood? Are you in a flood zone? Do you have to work outside where it's hot or where you're in bad weather? So it's really climate resilience is your ability to get out of harm's way. And so people are affected very differently. It's not just class. If you have underlying health conditions like heart disease or respiratory illness, heat waves are going to affect you more. Right. Yeah, it's a complex interrelated issue, a set of issues, I guess. But can you give a few examples of what the mystic, Myra, is doing about some examples we don't have a lot of time, but just a few examples of what you're doing. Yeah, let me give you an example of what it really means to work on climate at a regional level. So for example, last summer, during one of our heat waves, we had 80 volunteers go all over the watershed and take real-time transects of air temperature, humidity, and air quality across the 21 communities in the watershed. We're now making maps, we're calling it Wicked Hot Mystic, we partnered with Museum of Science on this, and that identifies the hottest place in each city or town, and then we're going to work with neighborhood groups in the hottest parts of our watershed to see what we can do to cool those areas off to keep people safe. I know the Arlington Tree Committee has done some work on maps, and they published something about the hottest places in Arlington, and then the message was what we can do to, like, they advocate planting more trees because those do cool down. Trees are rock stars. Another example is that we work with 21 cities and towns, and actually the Mystic River hosts the highest concentration of critical infrastructure north of New York City. If you think of Logan Airport and the Deer Island wastewater treatment plant, and there's 100 oil tanks bringing heating oil and gas into New England. That's all in the Mystic, I'm sorry. All in the Mystic. Yeah. All of our fruits and vegetables. What does Charles take over? I'm not geologically challenged, so graphically challenged. So the Mystic Watershed is the north side of Boston Harbor, all the way to Charles on Navy Yard. Perfect. Yeah, we've covered that in the past, but who thinks about this, unless you... Maybe we'll throw a little map. We just drive through our streets, you know, we go from the Charles to the Mystic and nobody's telling us where we are. That's right. Well, Porter Square, if you go through Porter Square and Cambridge, that's one of the edges between the Mystic and the Charles. And so what you're describing is some of the work that the resilience Mystic Collaborative is doing, is that all in the name of that? Yeah. Basically, my work, because we don't have counties, day to day I'm really supporting city and town staff to do their best work. A lot of times, an environmental group might lobby folks or might educate. We're really facilitative leaders, you know, in that we're helping cities and towns work together where they don't have the staff internally to do that. So it's, because climate is such a big existential challenge, all of us are going beyond our job descriptions to help people in places stay safe. And do you get any, I mean, it seems like Massachusetts is a pretty aware supportive of climate resilience initiatives, but do you get any pushback from cities and towns that are saying, you know, we can't afford to do this or, you know, we don't believe this is happening or? Nope. I spend no time on that question. There's plenty of work to be done. So, honestly, when we were working with infrastructure facilities, I worried that some of the infrastructure managers might not want to think about climate. It was the oil terminals who you might stereotypically think about as the most conservative, but they also work in Texas. They also work in New York. And it was the oil terminal managers who said anybody who doesn't believe in climate change is nuts. We're seeing that the storms are getting stronger and we're getting hit more often. For sure, climate change is real. So I think that is somewhat of a stale question. Got it. Yeah. No, I'm glad. Some of the biggest successes, I mean, you've touched on a few things, but do you see people, you know, really digging in to support this effort? Well, what's really exciting is that we were able to start with cities and towns who really wanted to make a difference. And so we got a very quick start. So we have been going for about three and a half years. We've raised about $5 million so far for regional climate resilience. And that has set us up in terms of planning and design to go for about $200 million in federal funding over the next few years. Doesn't mean they'll give us those grants, but we have real projects with engineering studies that are legitimately set up to get some of the infrastructure funding that has been released by Congress. So our hope is that over the next few years, our communities will be a whole lot safer from particularly coastal storms and then also inland flooding. And we were going to ask you about the focus for 2022. But you probably think of more in groups of years than just 2022, right? We do think of groups of years. So in our inland communities, we're thinking a lot about regional flooding. And how do we create more stormwater wetlands to trap water upstream to not flood people's basements or the subway or the river with too much water, with polluted water really. So we're trying to create more wetland habitat both for habitat and recreation and to store water. In the lower mystic, we're really trying to storm harden our critical infrastructure so that it still works if and when we get our own super storm sandy. And then throughout the watershed, we're working to cool off the hottest places so that people and wildlife and the built environment stay safe. That's not going to happen all next year, but that's what we're shooting for. And we had, you kind of touched on, I mean, I think all of your work is challenging, but necessary and probably rewarding. But what are some of the things that you've really had to dig in and go get additional resources for and things like that? The biggest challenge for us is that all of our budgeting and regulations assume that the external environment is static. So we will come up with a great idea and run into an environmental regulation from the 1970s that never imagines climate change and actually is working counter-productively. So even though we all want good things to happen, it's actually not legal yet. So we're pushing up against regulations that don't incorporate climate change in terms of how much rainfall they think is going to happen or whether you can expand a wetland. Another challenge is that our budgets don't incorporate climate resilience as a municipal challenge. Like we get state funding for schools and roads, but we don't for climate resilience. And there's a great grant program called the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program. But it's only like 10 or 20 million a year for 351 communities. You could go through that. We could use very fast. And so we need that funding to be at least $100 million a year. So it's not, we don't get the political challenges like they do in other parts of the country, but we just have a resource and regulatory challenge that hasn't caught up with the need. Right. We interviewed an official from the Charles River Watershed Association last time we were in the studio. And he was talking about dam removal on the Charles River watersheds and how that would benefit. And that's kind of a slow process because there are many stakeholders. And is that anything that you deal with on the mystic or are there any dams, like old dams? We are unlucky in the fact that the major dam on the mystic split the river in two. It's just like the Charles River Dam near the Science Museum. The Amelia Earhart Dam is near Assembly Row and the Encore Casino. And it was built in the 1960s before then the mystic was a tidal river all the way up to Alewife. And we had these big marshes that were allowed to flood. When we built Route 93, we built the dam and built right up to the new shoreline. So if we got rid of that dam, downtown Maldon would flood twice a day and Medford. And so instead of removing the dam, we're actually trying to elevate the dam to give us another 50 years of flood control. But once those dams are removed, we're going to have to move our communities away from the river and give the river more room to flood. Don't mess with mother nature. Yeah, we built ourselves into a pickle for sure. Right. Well, it seems like you are tremendously positive about what you do and the impact and the team you have. Do you ever just kind of get really tired? And how do you stay positive in the face of the work that you have to do? I for sure have bouts of hopelessness. But what I would say, and anybody who works on hospice or cancer or climate has to manage their head game, what I would say is that the same things that help communities be resilient, you can think about it on an individual level. You need to have more skills. You need to have more friends. You need to have more savings. And that will help you weather your own personal challenges as well as community challenges. So I always, sorry, did you have another slide? I would I always like to ask our guests what citizens can do. I mean, when we hear stuff like this, we get like all worked up at like, what can we really do? And, you know, we're glad that the organizations are there helping move it forward. But like, what do you need from us as viewers and citizens and observers of your work? The biggest thing is that success in this area comes down to collective action. And the more that we can recognize that we're all in this together and vote for those local tax increases to protect our communities, not just our individual houses, the more we support our politicians, when they want to do the right thing and take risks, the better. And I think COVID has made us shrink in our sense of self and our social networks. When we have a collective challenge like climate, we need to be not only look out for ourselves, but look out for our neighbors and people we don't even know. And so being more of a good neighbor is one of the things that's most important. Amen. Yeah, consider yourself as part of a social fabric. You know, what you do affects other people and what they do affects you. And, you know, that's kind of hard for us. And the age of rugged individualism, I guess. That's right. Kind of that way. Think collectively. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Julie. We are honored that you are out there doing that work and that you came to talk with us about the Climate Resilience Project at Mystic River Watershed Association. And can people contact you through mysticriver.org? Yes, absolutely. It would be my pleasure. And thank you so much for having us. You're welcome. Thank you so much. This quarterly program is recorded with the support of Arlington Community Media and premiered in 2021 on their public access stations, where it continues to be. Individuals are encouraged to bicycle the program to the towns and cities in their watersheds. So call up your local community media station and say, I've got an incredible program for you that affects everybody in your viewing area.