Patrick Hackett

During this last autumn, I had the pleasure of working for Save the Harbor Save the Bay, a nonprofit that works to help keep Boston Harbor clean and open to the public as well as get students out onto the bay. As a policy intern, I spent most of the time doing research on possible future threats to Boston Harbor and learning how official decisions are made to preserve our natural resources.

During my internship with Save the Harbor, I was given several projects in which I provided the organization with data they could use to detect any possible threats to Boston Harbor and to decide how they could best educate students on the issue.

My first project was an investigation and formal memo on the presence of microplastics in our water supplies, the cause and effect, and how to prevent and remove them. I was then able to attend an Outfall Monitoring Science Advisory Panel (OMSAP) meeting and observed the policy decision making process. I then worked with my fellow intern to create a formal report on students who attend Save the Harbors events. We covered a large scale of factors such as familial income and location in the Greater Boston Area. The goal of this project was to make sure that Save the Harbor was providing for as many people as possible as well as to gain a better understanding of the communities that were being served.

Finally, my last project was to lay the groundwork for Save the Harbors’ next big project, tracking the rainfall around Boston. Boston’s beaches have made enormous progress in recent years in terms of cleanliness and they are now clean and safe 95% of the year. However, excessive rainfall can cause bacterial blooms that force some beaches to close. Due largely to bureaucratic reasons some beaches are closed even longer than is necessary during the hottest days of the year. This long term project seeks to track rainfall and compare it to days the beaches are closed to hopefully fix these discrepancies and make sure the beaches are open as much as possible.

I am glad I was able to spend these months with Save the Harbor. Its members enjoy the work that they do and possess an extensive amount of experience in environmental protection and education. I was able to learn a great deal about how policy is formed as well as research and presentation methods and would recommend this organization to anyone who wants to work in non-profit or environmental sectors.