Big Heart Little Feet
Location
Big Heart Little Feet was founded by Patrick Conaway of Natick, MA. The mission of this organization is to help others and leave small footprints on the earth. In recent months he has organized neighbors and volunteers to clean-up some of the local waterways and trails in the parklands of Natick. In just a few months, he has established a Trail Work on Tuesdays and Thursdays mornings recruiting volunteers to help clean the plastic bottles for recycling, paper, glass
and large items like rubber tires, couches, vacuum cleaners and large metal containers. Throughout Natick he has installed trash barrels and recycle "buddy bins" plus walking stick "cribs" along roads, bridges, parks and trailheads. He is, also, working with high school environmental clubs at Natick and Framingham High School to involve them in the clean-ups, storm drain markings and rain garden initiatives.
One discover has been that town departments do not always work together with connecting projects. Pat has found a miniature superfund site in a wetland area that no one people have ignored for up to twenty years. He is learning how different departments in town have defined their roles, often, acting separately rather than joining together to solve these environmental issues. A major piece of the work that Pat is beginning to do now, is to help these departments connect some of the dots. This project is growing in scope and will be moving towards the bigger mission of finding new ways to operate within not only Natick but the five towns that are part of the Lake Cochituate Watershed.
I have been working on a different but related project in Natick for seven years. My name is Carole Berkowitz. I am the Chair of Protect Our Water Resources. Just last week, our citizen's group won a seven year battle against the State of Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation to stop the use of herbicides at the source. The State wanted to use herbicides to manage the invasive weed, Eurasian Water Milfoil, in an area that includes Natick's drinking water wellheads. The citizens researched to find an alternative, mechanical means. They discovered the DASH boat, a diver-assisted suction harvester. Pat read about my work. We have brought together our two groups and formed the Lake Cochituate Watershed Council, inc.
