Update on the Charles River’s Floating Wetland

For those of you who have been watching the Floating Wetland bloom and flourish this summer, we remind you to enjoy it’s last weeks here in the Lower Basin in 2024. According to Laura Jasinski, Executive Director of the Charles River Conservancy, the Wetland will be returned to its winter home at the MIT Sailing Pavilion late October or early November.  The ECG expects to schedule a farewell coffee, as we have in the past years, while we watch it being towed up the River for another winter. 

As a reminder that the Wetland is not just a “pretty picture” in the Charles, but it explores an ecological intervention to reduce harmful algal blooms in the Charles, which threaten the river’s health and limit the feasibility of swimming.. In-stream interventions, as a complement to complex upland solutions, like floating wetlands, offer a complementary strategy that can absorb and remove nutrients from the water, increase biodiversity, support local ecological changes, and provide other co-benefits, like additional green spaces.  Check out Lessons Learned from the Charles River’s First Floating Wetland for more in-depth information that details the project from idea to installation and from engagement through envisioned expansion. 

Watch for the date of  the ECG’s tribute the Floating Wetland’s trip up River.