MUDDY RIVER
An ongoing restoration project.
An urbanized sub-watershed.
Flowing through Olmsted’s iconic Emerald Necklace, the Muddy River is one of the most celebrated urban tributaries of the Charles River. However, centuries of development and urbanization along its banks in Boston and Brookline have severely degraded its water quality, earning it a D- grade in the 2020 Charles River Report Card.
While it doesn’t solve all of this important tributary’s problems, the U.S. Army Corps Muddy River Restoration Project has transformed the river corridor through extensive riverbank restoration, landscaping, and dredging to reduce local flooding.
MUDDY RIVER RESTORATION PROJECT
CRWA has plays a leading role in the Maintenance & Management Oversight Committee (MMOC) , providing a critical voice for the water quality, and continuing to advocate for greater efforts to fully restore the Muddy.
In 2024, CRWA collaborated with the Consensus Building Institute on a podcast episode about the Muddy River. The podcast brought together people with connections to different aspects of the Muddy to discuss how the river came to its present condition and what it means for the world around it.
A vision for the future.
In the fall of 2023, we held a vision meeting for stakeholders to kick off the community-led visioning process for a cleaner, more resilient Muddy River. Through this process, we hope to identify actions that the community can take to restore the water quality of the Muddy River by looking at its full watershed.
In the spring of 2024, we held a second stakeholder vision meeting to assess the Muddy River's existing conditions.
Want to stay involved? Email charles@crwa.org to make sure you're on the Muddy River email list!