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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 9, 2009

Contact: J. Magarian

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A healthy river – free of chemicals and raw sewerage, metals, toxins, bacteria, and of course garbage and the occasional automobile – provides for a robust ecosystem that promotes and fosters healthy lives for plants, animals, and people. The universal need for healthy living makes clean, safe, water a natural resource worth protecting.

- Christine Tabak, Executive Director of the Merrimack River Watershed Council

License Plates Fund Merrimack River Monitoring

“Monitoring the water quality of the Merrimack River will continue,” announced Christine Tabak, Executive Director of the Merrimack River Watershed Council (MRWC). Recently, the MRWC received a financial boost with a $35K grant from the Massachusetts Environmental Trust (the Trust).

According to Trust Director Dorrie Pizzelle, the Trust will provide over $500K in grants to more than 30 organizations this year, thanks to motorists who choose to purchase one of the Trust’s specialty license plates. “Trust plates, including our signature Whale Plate, are the only specialty plates that exclusively fund environmental initiatives,” said Pizzella. You purchase a plate from the Registry of Motor Vehicles and half the registry fee is donated to the Trust to fund water-focused environmental education and protection programs.”

The Trust has grown to become the Commonwealth’s premiere environmental philanthropy since its inception in 1988. Its primary source of income is environmental license plate revenue which has funded more than 400 grants totaling approximately $15 million.

MRWC is the first volunteer group in over two decades to regularly monitor the Merrimack River main stem in Massachusetts, and is the only advocate of the Merrimack River in Massachusetts independent of commercial or regulatory interests. Its Merrimack River Water Quality Monitoring, Analyzing, Protecting and Promoting (MAPP) Program is a volunteer effort started in 2007 to collect baseline water quality information in the 50 mile main stem of the Merrimack River in Massachusetts. During 2008, Fifty members of the Merrimack Valley community volunteered with the Merrimack River Watershed Council (MRWC) to both collect water quality data and survey the banks and shores along the length of the river. Volunteer teams conducted fifty monitoring trips throughout the spring, summer and fall of 2008.

Tracie Sales, Water Resource Manager for the MRWC, explained some of 2008 monitoring results: The data analysis results of bacteria counts and other indicators, based on accepted watershed association standards, showed the Merrimack River is unsafe for swimming on wet weather days almost half the time (47%) in 2008. On dry weather days, it was unsafe to swim 10% of the time. In addition, the river was found to be unsafe for boating almost 20% of the time on wet weather days, where the standards for boating are five times more lenient than for swimming.

“This grant will not only allow us to continue to monitor the Merrimack, but also increase the breadth of information we collect,” explains Sales  “The Merrimack is polluted for bacteria, nutrients and metals.  This grant will allow us to collect some in depth information on nutrients, which will help us to pinpoint sources of pollution that are not related to sewage in the river.”

To preserve the environmental education, conservation or public awareness efforts funded by the Trust in your community is easy: choose one of three environmental plates (Right Whales & Roseate Terns, Leaping Brook Trout, or Blackstone Valley Mill) when you purchase a new car or renew your auto registration. The plates cost $76, which includes a $40 tax deductible donation to the Trust. There is a renewal fee of $81 every two years. Visit your local Registry of Motor Vehicles or order plates online at: www.mass.gov/rmv; or log onto www.MassEnvironmentalTrust.org where you can learn more about the Trust, the programs it supports, and the specialty license plate offerings.

“This funding will be directly applied to the on-going monitoring, testing, and analysis, of the Merrimack River,” explained Tabak, “and allow the MRWC to continue it’s role as the ‘Voice of the Merrimack’.”

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jkm

 

www.merrimack.org