The engineers are using Massachusetts' Mystic and Aberjona Watersheds to design the computer modeling programs--but, according to Kirshen--"The technology we've developed will benefit waterways throughout the world."

The watersheds of the Aberjona and Mystic Rivers are ideal for this research because they encompass urban, residential and undisturbed lands with streams and lakes. Many of these areas have been heavily affected by decades of development and contamination. A half-million Massachusetts residents--just under 10 percent of the state's population--live in 21 cities and towns within the 76-square-mile Mystic River watershed alone.

"For more than 30 years, Tufts' civil and environmental engineers and health sciences researchers have been trailblazers in addressing the safety and security of our world's most precious resource--water," said Jamshed Bharucha, Tufts' provost and senior vice president. "In the past five years alone, they have received more than $20 million in funding because of their leadership in tackling a wide range of water issues, from groundwater remediation and watershed pollution to water-borne bacteria and wildlife habitat preservation. And their findings continue to create and/or strengthen public policies regarding the proper use and protection of the world's water supply."

The Tufts team is also "knee deep" in the final stages of another EPA-funded project--developing the first system to predict, assess and report the Mystic River's water quality to area residents "in real time."

Tufts engineers have installed water monitoring equipment along the Mystic and Alewife Brook at locations heavily used by recreational boaters and swimmers. This spring, data from these sites will be transmitted through radio technology to a central server at Tufts, where in
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Contact: Craig LeMoult
craig.lemoult@tufts.edu
617-627-4317
Tufts University
1-Apr-2003