We published River Restoration Design and Permitting: A Guide for Inland Rivers in the spring of 2025. This comprehensive guide provides direction to professionals and volunteers involved in the planning, design, permitting, construction, and maintenance of river restoration projects.
River restoration refers to the strategies and techniques used to enhance the natural state and functioning of rivers. Restoration projects solve problems related to water quality, infrastructure, public safety, dam safety, aquatic organism passage and habitat, or flood risk. A small project might focus on achieving a specific outcome at a discrete location; a large project might focus on restoring a natural process over an entire watershed. Small or large, such projects are complex, and often challenging to shepherd through the permitting process. For the first time, the information practitioners need to formulate, design, permit, and construct projects in Massachusetts has been assembled into one document.
Note: This Guide is published as a single PDF despite its larger size (97 MB) because it is hyperlinked throughout all sections.