To support the Clean Charles 2005 effort, in 1998 MIT’s EHS office purchased a boat to support the efforts of the Clean Charles Coalition. Originally intended to assist in trash clean up, to date the boat has primarily been used for water sampling. Water samples of the Charles River are currently taken by the Charles River Watershed Authority (CRWA) to ensure that the water quality is high enough to host many of the recreational activities on any given day between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The boat is also used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for various river projects aimed at improving the Charles.

EHS is incorporating a program that will expand the usage of the boat so that its use will be maximized for the greater good of the river. In this effort we offer training to interested student groups that would like to use the boat to pick up trash, do independent or class studies on the water, and even host field trips based on the efforts to conserve this watershed. EHS is also conducting the water sampling on behalf of the CRWA during the Fall and Spring seasons, some of the most heavily used times of the year for the Charles. For more information on this and other related topics please contact the Environmental Management Program in the EHS Office.