A chainsaw, two bicycles, a TV, and a shopping cart - these are the spoils dragged from the shores of the Mystic River on Saturday by volunteers for the Make a Difference Day River Clean-Up.
Braving cold, windy, rainy weather, volunteers at the Tufts Water Watch event covered about a mile and a half of shoreline along the river, where pollution levels currently prohibit recreational swimming and fishing.
Though only 11 students came to the clean-up on the shuttles provided by Water Watch, other students arrived straight from Parents Weekend with their parents, who rolled up their sleeves to clean the Mystic's shores.
Tufts volunteers were also joined by passersby and by high school students from Lexington high schools, one of whom found the chainsaw. "That made me a little nervous," Tufts Water Watch Organizer Zack Harlow-Nash said.
What makes the Mystic River so dirty? "Being an urban river definitely makes it difficult," Harlow-Nash said, adding that industrial waste is no longer the biggest problem since it is regulated by the Clean Water Act.
Instead, the river is most vulnerable to so-called "non-point source pollution" - the runoff derived from cars leaking oil, homeowners' use of fertilizers and pesticides, and the sewage overflow that happens when human waste leaks over into the rainwater pipes.
Part of the problem is the population density along the Mystic River watershed, which is home to about eight percent of Massachusetts' population in less than one percent of the state's land area, according to the Web site of the Mystic River Watershed Association.
Since the Mystic River's biggest problem is its water quality, not the visible trash along its shores, Harlow-Nash said river clean-ups were mostly designed to raise awareness among local residents and people in positions in power, who can raise money for cleansing efforts or help pass legislation.
"One of the benefits [of river clean-ups] is that it takes a really tough problem and makes more tangible and solvable," he said.
Recent studies conducted of the Mystic River show its water quality to be quite poor.
Of the 10 river sites monitored by the Mystic Monitoring Network (MMN) from June 2002 to March 2003, for example, eight had an average E. coli count that violated the Massachusetts Minimum Standards for Bathing Beaches.
High E. coli levels are not dangerous in themselves but they often indicate contamination from human or animal wastes, which make swimming and fishing in the river unsafe.
One of the most polluted sites with the highest levels of fecal coliform bacteria was at Alewife Brook, just down the river from the Tufts campus.
The MMN report said "all of the [10] sampling locations, except for Upper Mystic Lake and Mystic River at High Street, easily qualify as 'hot spots,' places with high levels of pollution, due to E. coli levels, total phosphorus, nitrate and nitrite and dissolved oxygen are of concern at several sites as well."
Indeed, Harlow-Nash said swimming in the Mystic was "a long way off."
The Mystic River Collaborative, a partnership between Tufts and the Mystic River Watershed Association, has set a goal to make the river swimmable in 2010, but Harlow-Nash said the group is currently reevaluating that goal.
Despite recommendations against doing so, Harlow-Nash said "there are children that swim in the river, and there are families that fish there and eat the fish for dinner."
Events like Saturday's are designed to get the word out to residents. "The cleaning we did wasn't always visible" due to the steeply-sloped shores of the Mystic River, sophomore participant Audrey Sherer said. "But it got the community involved in taking care of the river, which is huge," she said.
Organizers also hope to plan a concert on the river.
In addition to the Tufts chapter, Water Watch exists at 15 other colleges and universities in Massachusetts.
