{"id":221935,"date":"2021-06-30T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=539514"},"modified":"2021-06-30T10:30:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T10:30:00","slug":"a-watershed-moment-how-bostons-charles-river-went-from-polluted-to-pristine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/06\/30\/a-watershed-moment-how-bostons-charles-river-went-from-polluted-to-pristine\/","title":{"rendered":"A watershed moment: How Boston\u2019s Charles River went from polluted to pristine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan officially announced<\/a> earlier this month that the Biden administration will reinterpret the Trump administration\u2019s definition of what constitutes \u201cwaters of the United States\u201d \u2013 waterways that are deserving of federal protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s definition was actually a reinterpretation (or rejection) of what the Obama administration delineated as waters worthy of federal oversight. Obama had sought to increase protections under the Clean Water Act, based<\/a> on EPA science<\/a> conducted under both his administration and that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. The agency\u2019s researchers had determined that many wetlands and rain-fed intermittent and ephemeral streams were significantly connected to larger bodies of water than met the eye \u2013 and thus those tributaries warranted protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration\u2019s own scientific advisors agreed<\/a> with Obama\u2019s interpretation. No matter, the Donald\u2019s EPA gutted the rule on behalf of industrial and agricultural polluters<\/a> by removing<\/a> half of wetlands and a fifth of streams and tributaries from protection. That shift amounted to an overall 25-percent drop in protected waters, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noting that the Trump rule \u201cis leading to significant environmental degradation,\u201d Regan said he would work toward a \u201cdurable definition\u201d of waters of the United States. And he begins that effort at a time of year when, precisely because of decades of federally enforced cleanups, New England\u2019s most famous river \u2013 and once one of its most infamous\u2014 the Charles, is as magical as Florida\u2019s Everglades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most stunning drama this spring along the banks of the Charles, walking distance from downtown Boston, has been a pair of mute swans. They nested at a landing alongside a walking and biking path in the Back Bay neighborhood and produced nine eggs. Seven hatched. By predation or sickliness, the number of cygnets eventually went down to five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Swans
A pair of swans swims protectively around its chicks.\n Derrick Z Jackson<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Then, without warning, the mother died on the nest. A necropsy showed neither foul play nor ingested foreign objects did her in. The father then took on the chicks, sometimes letting them ride on his back. Even though the number of chicks has dwindled down to two as of late June, the family continues to stop strollers and joggers in their tracks, as do more familiar families of geese and goslings and ducks and ducklings cruising the waters and grazing on the grass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple miles up the river from downtown, black-crowned night herons and great blue herons patrol the banks, snapping up river herring<\/a> that have been restored through federal and state efforts. During the herring run, gulls often wait at a dam in the suburb of Watertown to gobble up the fish that evaded the herons\u2019 beaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Osprey occasionally fly in to dive for fish. Muskrat cruise the reeds as turtles bask on floating logs. As the river heads deeper into exurban Boston, bald eagles have been nesting,<\/a> continuing their remarkable recovery from a point in the 20th<\/sup> century when pesticides had led to their disappearance<\/a> in most states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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