Background on the Watershed Initiative

The Massachusetts Watershed Initiative is a shift from top-down, federal and state driven environmental protection to grassroots, locally focused protection. This approach makes sense because the challenges we face today are different than those we faced just a decade ago. Discharges from industry and wastewater, once the most significant threat to our rivers, have largely been brought under control by tough environmental laws and regulations. Today we face problems associated with growing populations and increased residential development. Many communities are unprepared for such rapid growth resulting in the overuse of our limited water supplies and pollution from widely dispersed sources like storm water runoff from paved area and failed septic systems. The MassGIS Watershed Analyst software and centerline route networks were created to support EOEA’s Watershed Initiative.

The Initiative coordinates municipal, state, and federal governments, businesses, and citizens with watershed associations and other non-profits to improve the effectiveness of efforts to prevent and repair environmental pollution in their own backyards and neighborhoods. Each of Massachusetts’ watersheds has a Watershed Team that includes representatives from local, state, and federal groups, led by a full-time team leader who works within the watershed. These teams work together to find effective and efficient regional solutions to the pollution, waters supply, and habitat degradation problems facing their communities.

The Initiative is based on a Five Year Planning cycle that is designed to collect and share resources and information, assess impacts to natural resources, and develop and implement activities to protect and improve them. Each year builds on the work of the previous year. Annual Work Plans, with input from the public, are developed by each watershed team and serve as a guide for coordinating team efforts. They are the building blocks of the Five Year Watershed Action Plan. The Five Year Watershed Action Plan focuses state and federal grants and loans, regulatory decision making and education/technical assistance programs to solve the highest priority problems within the watershed. The Action Plans are based on assessments of problems and broad public input. The Plans contain specific and measurable environmental targets to focus local and regional efforts. 

For more information about EOEA’s Watershed Initiative, contact Bob O’Conner, Director of the Watershed Initiative, at 617-727-9800 x258, or email: Robert.OConnor@state.ma.us

To find out your watershed’s EOEA Basin Team Leader, check this EOEA web site: http://www.state.ma.us/envir/teamlst.htm 

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Last Updated 3/22/2000
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