Background and Purpose
The Charles River flows 80 miles from Hopkinton, Mass. to Boston Harbor. The Charles River is the most prominent urban river in New England. It is a major source of recreation and a readily-available connection to the natural world for residents of the Boston metropolitan area. The entire Charles River drains rain and melted snow from a watershed area of 310 square miles.
Throughout most of the 20th century, the Charles River in Boston was known for its contaminated water. The reputation of the Charles River was popularized out of state by the song Dirty Water by the Standells, which peaked at #11 on the Billboard singles chart on June 11, 1965. (The song has a chorus containing the lines "Well I love that dirty water / Boston you're my home.")
Starting in the late 80s, efforts were made to start cleaning up the Charles River. In 1988, as the result of a lawsuit from the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) created a combined sewer overflow system to address sewage in the Charles River. In 1995, the CRWA, EPA, municipalities, and Massachusetts state agencies launched the Clean Charles Initiative, which included a report card for the Charles River that is issued by EPA scientists annually. The first grade the Charles River received was a D for the year 1995. The Charles River's grade peaked at A- in 2013 and 2018.
The Charles River Watershed Association ("CRWA") was formed in 1965, the same year that Dirty Water peaked at #11 on the Billboard singles chart. Via the CRWA's website:
CRWA is one of the country’s oldest watershed organizations and has figured prominently in major cleanup and protection efforts. Since our earliest days of advocacy, we have worked with government officials and citizen groups from 35 Massachusetts watershed towns from Hopkinton to Boston.
The EPA also relies on sample data collected by the CRWA to construct its report card.
Of the many services that the CRWA provides to the greater Boston community, one of those is monitoring whether it is safe to swim and/or boat in the Charles River. Traditionally, this was accomplished by running some data through a predictive model hosted on a PHP website and outputting the results through that PHP website. However, that website is currently out of commission. At Code for Boston, we attempted to fix the website, although we have had trouble maintaining a steady stream of PHP expertise inside the "Safe Water Project" (the flagging website's parent project). So we are going to be focusing now on building the website from scratch in Python. See the "Stack Justification" documentation for why we chose this path, and why we chose Python + Flask.
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This WBUR article provides a great overview of the CRWA and its monitoring programs. All volunteers should read it!
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The CRWA periodically sends a report to the Governor of Massachusetts on the status of the Charles River. This is the CRWA's latest report.