Volume 6 • Number 3 • Fall 2008

When it came time for UMass Extension to draft a five-year plan to address critical public issues that cut across the boundaries of our four primary programs, the protection and conservation of water resources was one of the first to be identified by our staff as urgent and as a natural focus for bridging the gap between academic research and practices to apply that research.

Water Wisdom from the Ground Up

If you happen to live in Duxbury, you might want to think twice about watering your lawn tonight. There are, after all, voluntary restrictions on unnecessary water use. Then again, you could be up in Chelmsford or out in Shrewsbury. There the restrictions are mandatory.

In fact, in spite of slightly above average rain fall in June, more than 60 Massachusetts communities had water use restrictions in place as of July 1, 2008.

Local water supply uncertainties and rapidly increasing demand, along with the prospect of climate change, have reminded us all that the availability of safe and sufficient water has as much to do with the way we use and protect it as it does with shifting weather patterns and whims of Mother Nature.

Boston 4-H Clubs Get Insiders' Tour of UMass Amherst

Looking west from Dorchester or Roxbury, you can’t exactly see the towering high-rise dormitories of UMass Amherst’s Southwest Residential Area.

For 32 teens affiliated with UMass Extension’s 4-H youth programs in Boston, however, the road to the Amherst campus seemed a little shorter after spending a day recently with UMass student volunteers on campus.

From the Malcolm X Cultural Center to the Isenberg School of Management, the whirlwind spring break tour was part of a 4-H initiative focusing on workforce preparedness for urban youth and funded by a five-year grant from the USDA’s Children, Youth and Families at Risk (CYFAR) program.

Water a Key to The Last Green Valley

Historically, the small rivers and streams of New England were the lifeblood of its inland cities and towns, powering the mills and small factories that drove the development, sustainability and quality of life that so many communities have long embraced.

And, insists Bob Levite, a specialist with Extension’s Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation program, those water resources remain a critical key to the future of the south-central Massachusetts towns that comprise the Quinebaug and Shetucket River Valley.

Fact Sheets Target Well Water Quality

So, what’s down your well, anyway?

Assuming, that is, you get your water from a private well – and according to the federal Environ-mental Protection Agency, more than 400,000 Massachusetts residents  do, in fact, drink private well water.

Many of those folks, notes Barnstable County Extension water quality educator Marilyn B. Lopes, simply don’t know what contaminants may be lurking there.

That’s why Lopes has spearheaded a UMass Extension initiative to assemble 27 easy-to-read, easy-to-access fact sheets on well water quality and testing. The fact sheets, distributed to the state’s municipal conservation commissioners and staff earlier this year, are now available on the UMass Extension website…

The French River,

a Quinebaug River tributary, that runs 26 miles from Leicester, Massachusetts to Thompson, Connecticut is part of the region’s industrial heritage, and increasingly part of its recrea-tional wealth.