Commonwealth Beacon / Asher Ben-Dashan and Perris Fisher

When it rains in Fitchburg, water races down Spring Street, the steep hill next to Longsjo Middle School. As it flows, it picks up oils, animal feces, and other pollutants that lay atop the asphalt and funnels them straight into a storm drain, and then the canals of the city.

There’s little vegetation to slow, absorb, and clean the water. The area is densely developed with houses on both sides and mostly paved over. Yards are small, and the middle school doesn’t have an outdoor green space. For a time, residents looked forward to a plan to install a rain garden halfway down the hill — a plan that was expected to mitigate the worst of the flooding, which pushes bacteria into the drinking water system.

In September 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded the Nashua River Watershed Association — a non-profit climate resilience organization representing 32 different towns throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire — a $500,000 multi-year environmental justice grant for stormwater management.

The project would have created green space near the middle school, completed restoration of a public park, and installed a small “pocket forest” in the south-west sector of the city where runoff is increasingly common.

Six months later, EPA officials terminated the grant because it “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.”