CRWA in the News

'Mad Kayaker' On A Crusade To Save The Charles:
CBS4 Celebrates Local Heroes This 4th Of July

By Ken Barlow, Reporting

CBS4, July 4, 2006 2:04 pm US/Eastern

BOSTON For anyone taking in the view of the Charles River, it can be a breathtaking sight. But sometimes, if you look very carefully, the sights and smells, are not always inviting. There is one environmental detective working hard to do something about Charles River pollution, and he's called the “Mad Kayaker."

His name is Roger Frymire and he doesn't mind the mad kayaker nickname. "Anybody that goes out and paddles as close to these dirty pipes as I do, and smells the things I put up with for fun, they've got to be a little bit crazy," he says.

The nickname is a badge of honor in a way. Roger's goal is nothing less than cleaning up the Charles River and its tributaries.

Several times a week Frymire spends hours kayaking along the riverbank looking for pipes. On the day we went with him, a pipe along Memorial Drive attracts his attention. "If it's not raining it shouldn't be flowing, so I'm wondering what's coming out of here," says Roger.

His mission began when he took early retirement from a computer job. "I took up kayaking and shortly after that got tired of smelling sewage whenever I would paddle on the Charles River."

Since then he's been dedicated to doing something about it, searching out pollution and drawing water samples, for no pay, for nearly 10 years. He made a stop on dry land on the Boston-Brookline line to check a storm runoff pipe at Leverett Pond. "Right now I can smell pretty definitely sewage," Frymire said.

"Boston Water and Sewer has removed, I believe, six illegal connections," he adds. But his nose is telling him they didn't get them all. So he'll take a water sample, and use an electronic meter to measure oxygen levels, temperature and salinity. "I'm afraid they haven't completely cleaned up this storm drain yet.”

Roger is more optimistic as he paddles into Lechmere Canal, an area that used to be polluted after heavy rains when sewage would sometimes combine with storm water. But times have changed. "They fixed all the problems. Looks pretty good these days.”

Frymire is hesitant to take too much credit, but environmentalists say he's a hero. "I love what Roger is doing for the river," says Anna Eleria from the Charles River Watershed Association. "He is single-handedly making a huge difference in the water quality and health of the river. There has been a tremendous direct improvement. Twenty to thirty some pipes have been cleaned up because of his work.”

Roger brings his water samples to the Environmental Protection Agency lab in Chelmsford for analysis. "It's a great benefit to EPA because with limited resources we can't be monitoring every pipe, every stream, every brook," says Tom Faber of EPA.

They took a close look at the sample results from the Leverett Pond pipe, the one Roger was concerned about, and found high bacteria levels indicating e-coli bacteria. When he finds evidence of pollution Roger acts. "You have to hit them over the head year after year," he says.

He'll reason, cajole and bring in the authorities if necessary. "This pipe was bad two years ago, it was bad last year, it's still bad today. When are you going to fix it?" said Frymire. According to Tom Faber of the Environmental Protection Agency, "EPA estimates that about a million gallons a day of raw sewage has been removed from the Charles River from pipes with illicit connections, and Roger has been instrumental in getting some of that cleaned up."

Frymire can see the difference. "There's a lot more types of fish now in the water, I'm seeing a lot more life. I'm optimistic, or I wouldn't still be doing this after 10 years," he says. Roger's dream is that one day the entire river will be clean enough to swim in. "The river's getting healthier by the year. It's clean enough to enjoy these days," he says.

Charles River Watershed Assoc.: www.crwa.org
EPA: http//epa.gov/region01/Charles

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