Of course it’s not all about swimming.  The Charles, after all, drains right into Boston harbor.  A clean river results in a clean harbor and surrounding beaches.  The full article is here and pasted below.

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A river that’s fit for swimming

By Renée Loth  |  May 15, 2010

FICKLE MAY has been cool lately, but with the upcoming Memorial Day weekend marking the unofficial start of summer Bostonians are starting to dream about lazy days by the shore and taking a refreshing dip in . . . the Charles River?

Believe it: swimming is coming back to the waters indelibly marked as “dirty’’ by the Standell’s classic song. The wide stretch of river below the Watertown Dam known as the Charles River Basin is already clean enough for swimming on most days — so long as you don’t touch the bottom. And though river swimming is often safe, it still isn’t legal.

Efforts to make the Charles swimmable date at least to the passage of the Clean Water Act of 1972. In the 1980s, the Metropolitan District Commission installed six pumps designed to push oxygen into layers of decay on the river bottom. In 1995, the Environmental Protection Agency began the Clean Charles River Initiative, aimed at making the river swimmable and fishable by 2005.

The EPA’s efforts dovetailed nicely with the $4.5 billion court-ordered Boston Harbor cleanup, which intercepted river pollution on its way to fouling the harbor. The newly created Massachusetts Water Resources Authority repaired or replaced the combined sewer overflow pipes that were flushing untreated sewage into the Charles whenever it rained. By 2005 the EPA’s annual report card for the Charles had improved from grade D to B-plus. What it means: last year the water in the basin was clean enough for human contact 62 percent of the time, up from just 19 percent in 1995.

Now a special legislative commission will start testing the water for bacterial counts and clarity at four potential swimming sites: Magazine beach in Cambridge; the MIT sailing pavilion; near the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade; and North Point park below the Museum of Science. Sentimentalists root for Magazine beach, where bathers frolicked until the 1950s. But the river is cleaner farther downstream.

For centuries, Bostonians treated the Charles like a liquid landfill, tossing in all manner of debris from factories, tanneries, and abattoirs. A 1656 ordinance allowed dumping “beast entrails and garbidg’’ into the river without a fine. Mercury, lead, and arsenic competed with human waste for the most toxic ingredients in the soup that could make a person feel sick.

I myself felt vaguely ill when I braved the waters of the Charles in 1983 for a story on cleanup efforts. Back then, the MDC stated bluntly in its annual report that the Charles would never be swimmable below the Watertown dam, so I took my dip at Forest Grove in Waltham. I wore old canvas sneakers to protect my feet from broken beer bottles obscured beneath the tea-brown waters, but the swim wasn’t slimy or unpleasant.

The MDC (now folded into the Department of Conservation and Recreation) got it wrong because it couldn’t predict the massive public investment that went into cleaning the harbor. Swimming in the Charles would be the redemption of that investment — a legacy project for a new generation of environmental stewards.

Challenges remain. A hard rain still flushes pollutants into the river, as daily monitoring by the Charles River Watershed Association attests. But now the biggest offender isn’t sewage, but storm water run-off. Phosphorous — from fertilizers, detergents, and even car exhaust — contributes to blooms of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), which can cause rashes or other ill effects.

Then there’s the sediment — heavy metals and other sludge that settles in the basin, robbing fish and other living things of oxygen. “There’s 150 years of industrial pain down there,’’ according to Kate Bowditch, a hydrologist at the watershed association.

To make swimming practical, officials would need to engineer some sort of cap for the sediment, since dredging would probably make things worse. Or a dock could be erected that lets swimmers enter into deep water. The Charles River Conservancy publishes a booklet showing how Zurich, Basel, and other European cities have enlivened their riverfronts with swimming pavilions. Boston would be the first American city to try it.

On July 11, with a special permit from DCR, the pioneering members of the Charles River Swim Club plan a mile-long race near the Hatch Shell. There’s still time to register. I wonder whatever happened to those old canvas sneakers.

Renée Loth’s column appears regularly in the Globe.

The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s (MWRA) water connector pipe that began leaking Saturday morning (and then broke completely) resulted in over 8 million gallons an hour of water pouring into the Charles River.  For a time, the flow of the river at the Waltham gage, downstream of the break, doubled from approximately 350 cubic feet per second (cfs) to approximately 700 cfs.  The pipe connection broke 20 feet below ground near Recreation Road, and the gushing water carried an estimated 400 cubic yards of soil and sediment directly into the river.  The pipe was repaired Sunday morning, and a boil water order was just lifted today for the 2 million people served by the MWRA.

CRWA staff and volunteers have been monitoring the river, tracking the plume of fine sediment that is moving down the river.  We are especially worried about river herring, which have begun their annual migration up into the Charles earlier than usual and have already been spotted entering the river to spawn. The river ecosystem has been extremely stressed during the past month, first by March’s huge floods, then by the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s rapid drawdown of the river to allow repairs to the Moody Street dam, and now by the flood of drinking water and sediments from this water pipe break. CRWA staff are doing our best to monitor the river, and will be working with government agencies and other organizations to undertake any necessary measures to protect the Charles.

Choice quote:  “Bruce Berman, a spokesman for the Boston-based advocacy group Save the Harbor-Save the Bay …. said “I absolutely understand why people are upset. Twenty years ago, we released 280 million gallons of largely untreated waste every day. Today, we make news when we release 15 million gallons of sewage once, during a really big storm. That’s good news.’’  The full article is available here.

The Charles has also seen similar improvements.  Since 1987 the CSO discharges into the river have been reduced by over 80%.

See the CRWA’s Blue Cities page on rainwater reclamation and the CRWA’s sewer separation page for information on ongoing projects to address these chronic problems.

This is a great article, please take the time to read it.  The full article is available here.

Some interesting excerpts:

In the last three years alone, more than 9,400 of the nation’s 25,000 sewage systems — including those in major cities — have reported violating the law by dumping untreated or partly treated human waste, chemicals and other hazardous materials into rivers and lakes and elsewhere, according to data from state environmental agencies and the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Several years ago, city officials estimated that it would cost at least $58 billion to prevent all overflows. “Even an expenditure of that magnitude would not result in every part of a river or bay surrounding the city achieving water quality that is suitable for swimming,” the department wrote. “It would, however, increase the average N.Y.C. water and sewer bill by 80 percent.”

From the article:

“I’d love to jump in, but I’m not going to,” said Chrissy Hammond, 30, who was sunbathing on the Esplanade yesterday. “Everyone knows the Charles isn’t that clean.”

No, Chrissy, you shouldn’t just jump in… But the river of even just a few years ago is not the river of today.  As more MWRA and similar projects come to fruition (such as the Stony Brook Sewer Separation) the Charles’ water should transition from “good” to “excellent” and hopefully the EPA will finally give the river an “A” rating (currently a B++).

The full Metro story is available here.

The state Department of Conservation and Recreation is recommending that people stay out of the water at several Boston-area beaches, warning that they could get sick if they take a dip.

Red flags are flying, signs are posted, and lifeguards are urging people not to swim at Tenean Beach in Dorchester, Carson Beach in South Boston, and parts of Wollaston Beach in Quincy.

The probable culprit is the recent rains, which have washed animal waste, such as dog and bird droppings, into storm sewers that dump into the water, said DCR spokeswoman Wendy Fox. That can lead to the enterococcus bacteria entering the water, which can cause gastrointestinal illness for those who come in contact with it, she said.

The full story is here.

The Charles has typically experienced a deterioration in water quality after heavy rains.  Knowing just how much rain is going to cause a problem is a different matter though.  As MWRA projects advance to completion the capacity of the river to handle rain events improves.  The Stony Book Sewer Separation, for example, was a $45 million project that has reduced CSO (Combined Sewage Overflow) events from 22 times per year to 2.  This has resulted in a reduction of 44.5 million gallons of CSO per year to 0.13 million.  Not bad!

The race, which was supposed to have taken place on Sunday, June 21st, was to be the third of its kind. The club held successful races in 2008 and 2007. The at-capacity race had attracted 150 swimmers from around New England and was to be the largest to date.

“Safety is of utmost importance to the club and the state agencies with whom we work. A dimension of our permit is a specific rainfall allowance between the time of the last water sample and the time of the race. Unfortunately this year the threshold was exceeded by Friday afternoon with additional rainfall in the forecast, forcing us to cancel the race. ” said Ulla Hester, race director.

There is no rain date for this year however the club expects to pursue a 2010 race.

“While much work remains to be done on the Charles, it’s important that people understand that the rain cancellation was a cautionary move. All water samples leading up to and including what would have been race day came back within swimming standards,” said club president Frans Lawaetz.

Race day water testing is not possible as samples take 24 hours to process.

The Charles River Swimming Club, Inc., was founded in 2005 with the dual purpose of organizing competitive swimming events in the Charles River and facilitating the return of public river swimming.

Media contact:  raceinfo@charlesriverswimmingclub.org

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The probability of any similar, near-term spot-dredging in the Charles is next to nil in my opinion.  All of the original pollutant-spewing factories and mills along the Charles are now long out of operation and their respective companies are most likely long dissolved.

For the swimming race we have a simple solution to the sediment problem — we avoid it alltogether.  Participants enter and exit the Charles via dock ladders.

You can read the rest of the NY Times article here.

While bacteria from Combined Sewage Overflows (CSO) during heavy rainfall have long been the main focus of water quality concerns, phosphorus is quickly rivaling it as river enemy #1.  The CRSC’s first planned swimming race, planned for 2006, was cancelled due to an unusually strong cyanobacteria bloom [Boston Globe].  Microcystis cyanobacteria can produce toxins called microcystins which are potentially dangerous under certain conditions.

Please give their page a look, it has some excellent info.