NHS senior takes lead in river survey

NEWBURYPORT — Dedicated to protecting the environment, a Newburyport High School senior is taking the lead in updating the Alliance of Climate and Environmental Stewards’ survey of the Merrimack River.

Now, she’s looking for the public’s assistance.

“Whether you’re a resident, a professional or any recreational user, we just want some help in getting your voices heard,” Madeleine Rhoden said. “The more people we can get to respond, the more we can raise awareness about pollution concerns and the public’s opinion on proposing solutions to improve river health.”

The Alliance of Climate and Environmental Stewards (or ACES for short), is a network of organizations and individuals dedicated to climate and environmental health.

In 2022, the local nonprofit organization published the results of its three-year survey of Merrimack River users that showed most people don’t believe the river is healthy.

Conducted from 2020 to 2021, the initial survey involved over 550 general users of the river throughout the 117-mile Merrimack River watershed. The poll showed that 95% of those who responded are concerned about the river’s condition, while 73% believe it is unhealthy to be in, or to drink the water.

Since over 600,000 people get their drinking water from the river, that figure alone is concerning to ACES.

Rhoden was a student at Austin Preparatory School at the time the survey went public in 2022. But she came to NHS in her junior year a year later.

This past December, she helped ACES organize the environmental career open house it held for NHS students. That, she said, got the attention of the head of ACES’ Protect Natural Resources initiative, Lon Hachmeister.

He was tasked with doing a five-year follow-up to the survey and thought Rhoden might be a good fit to direct the project with him.

Rhoden jumped at the chance and is working as an ACES intern.

“She’s good, she’s amazing,” Hachmeister said. “We’re co-directors on this but I’ll tell you right now, she’s doing most of the work. We’re going to be at a water quality roundtable soon and she’s going to be giving a five-minute presentation on the survey.”

Using a Survey Monkey page, Rhoden is collecting insight from recreational users, residents as well as businesses, to better understand concerns and trends along with priorities related to the river’s health and accessibility.

“I have a deep passion for environmental conservation and believe that community input is essential to protecting and improving the Merrimack River,” she said.

The current survey, Rhoden added, builds on the initial study’s results to help inform future conservation and management efforts.

“We want to know where people along the river live,” she said. “The river starts all the way up in Franklin, New Hampshire. It then flows all the way down to here. Right now, we have a lot of people responding in this area. But we’re looking to expand up there.”

Just how people use the river (what activities they engage in or if they use it professionally), Rhoden said is another data point.

The survey also asks people who use the river for drinking water if they have experienced any health problems or know anyone who has.

“We also ask the same thing about pets,” Rhoden said.

There are also a few questions, according to Rhoden, about combined sewage overflows, which occur when upriver sewage plants in Massachusetts as well as New Hampshire release raw human waste into the river after a large rainstorm.

“We want to know if people have heard of them in the first place,” she said. “Then, we want to know the degree of concern they have about them.”

Rhoden added that she hopes to have the survey out to the public for the next two months at least.

“We’re looking to see how many respondents we can get and, over the summer, we can start writing up a report,” she said. “Hopefully, we can get between 600 and 1,000 responses.”

Rhoden, Hachmeister said, is writing other reports for ACES as well.

“There has to be oversight, of course,” he said. “But most of the time, I’m sending her things I’ve written for her to oversee.”

A city native, Rhoden said she has always had a deep love for the great outdoors.

“I do everything outside,” she said. “I built a little town in the woods made out of teepees when I was a kid. I go hiking all the time and will literally pick up any creepy crawly I find.”

It was in her junior year that Rhoden became more interested in science, thanks to her teacher, Dr. Erin Hobbs.

“I took her research-based field studies class and really flourished from there,” she said. “We went outside and did research. Then, we wrote a really long research paper that I got to present at a Mass Audubon conference. From there, I kind of took on the role of a science department ambassador. If there’s any environmental event going on, you will see me there.”

In the fall, Rhoden will head to Michigan State University, where she is going to major in aquatic ecology and management with a potential minor in culinary or food science.

“It’s a little bit complicated but my whole goal is learning about freshwater and natural resources,” she said. “I want to know how to protect and manage that.”

Hachmeister said Rhoden is a real “go-getter.”

“Her internship runs out a the end of the school year,” he said. “I told her the program is going to go on throughout the rest of the summer and asked if she could stay on. She said, ‘Of course.’” Take the survey at: surveymonkey.com/r/mrus2025.