Editor’s note: This is part two of a three-part series chronicling the current state of the Connecticut River as it runs through Massachusetts, in light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to limit the Clean Water Act. In part two, writer Anna Laird Barto paddles from the Turners Falls Dam to the Coolidge Memorial Bridge. Barto began her journey before the recent catastrophic flooding throughout the region.

This is part three of a three-part series chronicling the current state of the Connecticut River as it runs through Massachusetts, in light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court
decision to limit the Clean Water Act. In part three, writer Anna Laird Barto returns to the river for the first time after recent catastrophic flooding made it unsafe for swimmers and boaters.

Twice a growing season, a big yellow truck with the license plate “P4FARMS” pulls into Jesse Kayan’s farm in Brattleboro, Vermont, loaded with a thousand gallons of pasteurized human urine sloshing around in IBC totes.For more than 10 years, Kayan has been applying human urine to his hayfields through a partnership with the Brattleboro-based Rich Earth Institute, a non-profit engaging in research, education and technological innovation to advance the use of human waste as a resource. In August,...

The water is clear enough that from my kayak I can see the wild celery rippling on the river bottom. But there’s no sign of the granite tri-state marker, which was submerged in the 1960s after the reconstruction of the Turners Falls Dam. The view is the same across state lines: steep wooded banks leading up to fields of strawberries, vegetables and hay. Rivers do not respect socially constructed boundaries.