Rhode Island’s Ocean and Coastal Magazine

Spring/Summer 2024

Letter From the Editor

RIVER RELATIONS

Narragansett Bay covers approximately 150 square miles, most of which are in Rhode Island. However, the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program (NBEP) covers 2,000 square miles, including the bay itself and Little Narragansett Bay, the coastal salt ponds, and all their watersheds, extending into Massachusetts and Connecticut.

This issue of 41°N is produced in partnership with NBEP to explore these interconnected waters in places we don’t often get to cover in this magazine.

Ellen Liberman looks at the growing battle to redirect, contain, clean, and otherwise manage stormwater along the Runnins, Blackstone, Woonasquatucket, and Pawcatuck rivers. We visit a homeowner in East Providence struggling to keep floodwaters at bay, a nonprofit leader who is treated to views of a storm-day “geyser” of sewage in a park outside her Olneyville, Providence office, and a furniture store owner in Westerly who is balancing parking needs versus absorbing runoff. We also meet many people in local, state, and federal governments who are working to make things better.

In a very different vein, Meredith Haas brings us to an Indigenous celebration of relationships with the Blackstone River (called Mishkittakooksepe by the Narragansett and Kittacuck by the Nipmuc) and a look at how the Narragansett Indian Tribe and the Hassanamisco Band of Nipmuc have come together with nonprofits, state agencies, and others to restore the river for the benefit of future generations.

We welcome writer Colleen Cronin of ecoRI News and her first story for 41°N with yet another take on the Blackstone—how to find your way to an access area to enjoy its “bucolic” beauty without landing in a tangle of poison ivy. The Clean Water Act (which birthed NBEP, by the way) led, over time, to dramatic improvements in water quality in Narragansett Bay. That should, one might imagine, lead to an abundance of healthy fish and plants calling that ecosystem home.

But as the bay warms, some iconic species are declining while new species move in. Marybeth Reilly-McGreen introduces us to those who are studying these changing conditions.

The saltmarsh sparrow and the horseshoe crab are two other species that occupy particular ecological niches. They, too, are vulnerable to climate change, writes Sarah Francis. The Rhode Island Natural History Survey is updating a database of more than 500 rare and threatened species like them to support preservation efforts. A project like that wouldn’t be possible without the people to do the work, but many funders want to support “shovel-ready” projects, writes Annie Sherman in her story on how the unglamorous work of planning, professional development, and staff retention needs dollars—and, through NBEP, has found them—just as much as tangible products such as construction projects and tree plantings do.

We hope you enjoy this look at our local and regional watersheds and the communities connected by these rivers that flow through them.

—Monica Allard Cox, Editor