CHARLES RIVER
WATERSHED ASSOCIATION RECEIVES GRANT FOR SECOND YEAR OF ENVIRONMENTALLY
SENSITIVE URBAN DEVELOPMENT Boston Foundation money to address
improvements to urban open space and water resources Weston, MA, March
1, 2006 --
Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA), a leading environmental
organization headquartered in Weston, has received $75,000 from the
Boston Foundation to fund the second year of a three-year project to
develop an environmentally sustainable urban development approach for
the Boston area. CRWA is
working in three neighborhoods, North Allston, the Longwood Medical
and Academic Area (LMA), and Zakim North (in Charlestown, Cambridge
and Somerville). CRWA’s project aims to find ways to
improve the urban environment, particularly around water and open
space issues, and to work directly with residents, businesses,
institutions and government agencies to see these ideas implemented. The three areas CRWA is looking at are
all undergoing rapid redevelopment, but are distinctly different urban
settings. Harvard
University is building a major new campus in North Allston, an active
residential neighborhood. Zakim
North is growing into a large new residential and mixed use
neighborhood, anchored by the North Point development, in an area that
has historically been an underutilized institutional rail and
industrial corridor. And
the LMA is expanding in an area of existing dense institutional use.
By looking at the urban environment in all three of these
areas, CRWA hopes to create an approach that can be applied in many
other places. As
part of their work to support environmentally sensitive urban
development in the Allston area, “Boston
is an old city that grew and developed before people recognized the
impacts of urbanization on the environment,” said Kate Bowditch,
Project Manager at CRWA. “Rivers
were filled in, streams were buried in pipes, dams and seawalls were
built to hold back the tides: all this was done to make room for a
growing urban landscape. Today
we’re living with the impacts of radically altering the environment.
Our rivers flood; our waters are polluted; our groundwater is
depleted; and we spend millions of dollars bringing clean water into
our homes and getting wastewater out.” CRWA sees redevelopment as an
opportunity to reverse these trends, and to create an urban landscape
that works with the environment rather than against it.
“The key to successful urban environments,” according to
Bowditch, “is to understand the way land and water work, and to
create built systems that mimic nature.
People embrace these ideas pretty quickly once they start to
think about them.” CRWA, founded in 1965, is a community-based
nonprofit organization responsible for protecting the 80-mile-long
Charles River and its 308 square mile watershed, using sound science,
advocacy and legal expertise to predict and correct problems related
to water quality and supply. The Boston Foundation, one of the
nation’s oldest and largest community foundations, has an endowment
of close to $686 million. Last year, the Foundation made grants of $63
million to nonprofit organization and received gifts of $53 million.
The Boston Foundation is made up of 850 separate charitable funds,
which have been established by donors either for the general benefits
of the community or for special purposes. The Foundation also serves
as a civic leader, convener, and sponsor of special initiatives
designed to build community. “We are delighted that the Boston
Foundation has provided funding for the second year of this For more information about the Boston
Foundation and its grant making, visit www.tbf.org,
or call 617-338-1700. For more information about the work of the
Charles River Watershed Association, visit www.charlesriver.org,
or call 781-788-0007. ### Charles River Watershed Association’s uses science, advocacy and the law to protect, preserve and enhance the Charles River and its watershed. One of our country’s first watershed organizations, CRWA formed in 1965 in response to public concern about the declining condition of the Charles River. Since its earliest days of advocacy, CRWA has figured prominently in major clean-up and watershed protection efforts that have dramatically improved the health of |