- [Eileen] What flows in a river is something
that's essential to all of us,
and when you see it in that dynamic form going by,
you see it supporting all of that life,
it's a very primal sensory experience.
- [Alison] The water doesn't stay still, it's always moving,
so, when you think about rivers,
you have to think about the whole landscape.
And, you have to think about all the communities,
the people upstream, the people downstream,
how they affect each other.
- [Alan] The Wild and Scenic designation
really is a source of pride.
It's something that we see as a point of identity
and it means that our river really is a national treasure.
(mellow music)
- [Eileen] The original Wild an Scenic rivers
in the Western part of the country
were rivers that were not much developed
and largely on Federal land.
But, the rivers in the East have recovered a great deal
so that now these rivers have become valuable
scenic and recreational assets again.
-[Jamie] The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act
was a big umbrella but it took a long time
for the Park Service to figure out how to use it
to protect rivers where you're not
going to create a federal park,
where it would be inappropriate
to buy or manage the private lands.
How do you deal with those rivers?
And that was really the problem that Partnership Rivers
set out to solve.
(mellow music)
- [Don] The whole area's very special,
but the gem of the area,
which draws people from all over the country, is the river.
-[Eileen] Parts of making a case
for Wild and Scenic designation
is demonstrating that the river has outstanding resources.
There's a tremendous trout fishery,
cold water fishery here.
- [Dale] I fish all over the place and everybody
has heard of the Farmington River,
and you see license plates from New York, New Jersey,
all over the place.
- [Eileen] You can kayak.
You can canoe.
You can go tubing.
- [Jeremy] When people recreate on the river
they get to experience it firsthand
and they get to understand
why it's important to protect it.
- [Eileen] So, there are tens of thousands of people
using this river for recreation and all the
auxiliary businesses that are supported
by anglers and paddlers.
All of these different interests
really needed a mechanism for working together,
and the Wild and Scenic designation
seemed to be a really good way to do that.
- [Stephan] So, Micky has volunteered with us
since the beginning.
- [Eileen] When we all meet together,
we're asking one another,
"What are we going to do
"to promote river outreach and education?"
- The Farmington River is a very special place.
Becoming part of the River Steward program
is just protecting an area
that has given me so much over the years.
We help with invasive removal,
also promote education to the youth in the area.
We do some cleanups.
- [Don] We have a very strong spirit of community.
People who are retired will go out and walk the
riverbanks and clean it up, so,
it takes a lot of different folks.
(mellow music)
- [Eileen] There's also resources stewardship,
like our water quality monitoring program.
- [David] We are sampling 15 different locations
on the Upper Farmington.
We check for bacteria, for chemicals, and minerals.
This is a project that's been going on
for at least 10 years.
Our hopes are to engender more people helping us out,
working to fulfill that management plan.
We need everybody to become a steward
of the Farmington River.
(mellow music)
- [Eileen] One really great example
of how people bring different sensibilities
to their appreciation of a river
is the Farmington River Quilt Project.
Favorite scenes and favorite spots
along the Wild and Scenic stretch of the river
portrayed as quilts.
They really capture the essence of the river,
and shows communities all over the state
what an incredible Wild and Scenic river we have.
So, it's serving as our ambassador in a lot of new places.
(mellow music)
- [Alison] Our rivers flow through a patchwork
of different kinds of ownership.
There's US Fish and Wildlife Refuges, the National Park,
but there's also a lot of private property,
state conservation land, roads,
all kinds of things that make it
actually pretty complicated to manage a river.
- [Elizabeth] There are some businesses that are
located along the river,
there are private homes along the river,
the towns own land along the river.
- There's all these sayings,
all these colloquialisms.
"Two heads are better than one." "It takes a village."
When we all get together and find that common ground,
we really do work much more effectively
to protect this area than we would
if we could work individually.
(mellow music)
- [Julia] I love rivers, and they all have
their own personality.
The Assabet is a very intimate experience.
I think it's a beautiful river,
and it's a hidden treasure for Massachusetts.
You never go on this river without seeing great blue heron,
turtles, frogs, snakes.
It's an osprey.
You forget you're less than an hour away from Boston.
- [Alison] This Wild and Scenic river is the closest
Wild and Scenic river to a metropolitan area.
On a weekend you'll see a lot of people using our rivers.
- That is new, it didn't used to be that way,
in recent history, because the rivers
were very badly polluted.
- The Assabet River had five major
wastewater treatment plants discharging treated sewage,
and our work has been to help clean that up.
- Just a little bit upstream
was where it got really kinda gross.
But, because downstream we had Wild and Scenic,
that gave us some good leverage
for protection from those polluters upstream.
So, it's a really wonderful tool
for people in the community who want to clean up the rivers.
- We've been able to do that because
Wild and Scenic river designation
allowed for there to be funding to collect the data
to make the decisions so that
investments can be made to clean up the water.
- We have some pretty serious
invasive plant problems on our rivers.
This is what you see on the river,
you just see this little bit,
and they hang in the river and then
all this will break down in the fall
so it can have a negative impact on the
dissolved oxygen content,
so you reduce your native fish
because many of the native fish
need a little higher dissolved oxygen.
There were so many of these water chestnuts in here
that you could not possibly remove them by hand,
you had to use a big piece of equipment.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service
formed a partnership with the town of Lincoln,
the Concord Land Conservation Trust,
and the town of Concord to purchase
an aquatic weed harvester to pull them out of here.
- [Alison] Working together,
we've been able to have an impact
that we could never have had otherwise.
We're part of a watershed that's three rivers.
The Sudbury and Assabet Rivers meet in Concord,
and at their confluence,
the rivers turn into the Concord River.
-[Julia] This place has a very rich history.
It has one of the highest concentrations of
Native American artifacts in all of New England,
and then the American Revolution got started right here.
The Minutemen went right over the Old North Bridge.
So, this is really ground zero for the American Revolution.
[Elizabeth] This whole area's got a lot
of historical significance.
So, one of the things that
the River Stewardship Council does
is we review projects that are either federally funded
or where there's a federal permit that's necessary.
This is Lee's Bridge.
We worked really hard to recreate the bridge
the way it used to look
but meeting current design standards.
- [Alison] I love working on rivers because they
connect things, they connect people and sustain them,
because we need the water.
We need the wildlife, we need the peace and quiet
for our minds and our souls and our children.
- [Jamie] Communities that have been
living in harmony with these rivers for hundreds of years,
they've got some strong feelings about what's important.
So, if you bring that in and integrate it into the planning
from the get-go, you're much more grounded in a reality
that's gonna get you a good product.
- [Eileen] Wild and Scenic sometimes suggests to people
that the river's going to be considered
wild and pristine and therefore you won't be allowed
to do anything on it or around it.
That's really not the case.
It's recognized that these rivers are within towns.
They had historic uses.
And, that is respected.
- [Julia] It's brought some money,
it's brought some attention,
and it's brought the communities together
around the rivers in a nice way.
It certainly wasn't a land grab by the federal government.
(mellow music)
- [Alan] Musconetcong is a Lenni Lanape word.
We think it means a meeting place of clear, flowing water.
I grew up with the Musconetcong River in my back yard.
That's why I get engaged and excited about
protecting the river.
It's a great way to talk about the history
that you just absorb growing up in a place.
Back when there wasn't electricity,
people needed a way to get power,
and the best way of getting power was from the river,
and people built grist mills to grind their grain.
None of these dams were used to prevent floods.
Some of them are hazardous, and they could breach.
We work in partnership with dam owners
who have a high hazard dam,
and if they would like the dam moved,
we're a way to bring in outside funding
to help remove that dam.
We've been restoring the migratory fish passage.
So, fish like shad, alewives, other river herring,
and eels can come back.
So, the shad came back a year after we took down that dam.
The shad are an iconic fish in the Delaware River watershed.
So when the shad came back it drew a lot of attention,
great success for the river,
and it's a great way to restore the environment
and really meet what the Wild and Scenic River Act is about.
- [Geoff] To see a fish that hasn't been here
for hundreds of years, that was probably one of
the best feelings I've had in my career.
You catching anything?
- [Danny] My dad caught some.
- Trout?
- Yeah.
- This is a rainbow trout.
They're moving the damn so it's very nice right now.
- [Geoff] The river is moving in the direction
that it needs to move in terms of recovery.
This is a culmination of ecology and engineering
coming together on a project.
I like to stand here listening to it.
- [Michael] It's relaxing.
That water just, it's just relaxing to hear it
go through there like that.
- [John] It looks just like a Rocky Mountain stream.
It flows the way it's supposed to.
I don't think anybody in a hundred years
has seen it flow like this.
It's gorgeous, we love it.
(mellow music)
- [Alan] We have five staff, two are full time,
three are part time.
Even though we're small,
a local article called us The Mighty MWA
because of what we've been able to accomplish,
and it's through having that base level of support,
the capacity that comes from the Wild and Scenic Act.
Congress makes it eligible for designation,
but for it to actually go into force
the local communities need to agree to it.
It's a way of exercising the pride
that people feel about where they live,
and it builds an identity to not just the river,
but the region overall.
(mellow music)
- [Alison] I think we're seeing the return of rivers.
Even our mill towns now are turning back
towards the rivers and making them a centerpiece,
making them an asset instead of a liability,
and that's very exciting to see.
- [Eileen] The river is never going to go back
to an untouched, pristine state.
So, the question is, what choices are we going to make
in shaping the future of the river?
- [Alan] Rivers cross boundaries, they're often used
as a dividing line between boundaries.
It can result in a fragmented way to look after a river
and care for it and what the Wild and Scenic Act does
in creating the River Management Council,
it creates a more holistic view of the river overall.
- [Jamie] Everybody wants clean water.
They want to preserve the recreational opportunities.
They want to preserve the wildlife.
They want to preserve the historic character.
They can't do these things alone.
It's gonna need to be a collaborative effort
with state and federal agencies, non-profits.
A lot of the draw of partnership rivers
is that we bring these parties together
to preserve that resource and make the most of it
for future generations.
- Every time we used to go out in the boat
this guy here was the only one that would catch trout!
Alls we'd catch was weeds.
(everyone laughs)
We got the hawks, the...
- Right.
- What's that long-necked bird?
- Oh, heron, heron.
- Heron.
We had a couple of them in here.
- Yeah.
- Dick don't like 'em 'cause he's got a pond,
they go after his fish.
- They eat your fish, yeah.
- They want my fish. (chuckles)
- I can sit on my deck in my yard
when the water's a little bit higher
and I love to hear that ripple effect.
- When I check on him as he's listening to the ripples,
he's usually asleep.
- Naw, come on, I'm not sleepin'.
How can you sleep listening to the ripples of the water?
- Puts you to sleep.