More than 200 volunteers showed up Saturday at Gateway Park for Everett’s annual Earth Day cleanup, according to the city, hauling out more than 25 bags of litter and planting more than 300 native trees, shrubs, and groundcover plants along the Malden River.
That is the good news. People gave up part of their Saturday morning to clean up a waterfront that has been treated like an afterthought for decades. Everett could use more of that and less performative online politics.
The city says the work was done in partnership with Clean Up Everett and included volunteers, city staff, and outside groups including the Mystic River Watershed Association, BSC Group, the New England Revolution, Electrify Everett, the Everett Haitian Community Center, Latinos Unidos en Massachusetts, Eliot Family Resource Center, Kiwanis, and For Kids Only.
Mayor Robert Van Campen, in the city’s announcement, called it part of a larger effort. “What you see today is not a one-time event,” he said. “It is part of a longer commitment this city has made to its waterfront, and to every resident who deserves a clean, green neighborhood to call home.”
That line is worth taking seriously, because Everett’s waterfront does not need one-off photo ops. It needs steady work over years. Gateway Park and the Malden River sit next to the long mess left by Everett’s industrial past. If the city is serious about “a longer commitment,” the real test is whether this kind of maintenance and restoration keeps happening when there isn’t an Earth Day banner attached to it.
The city also said volunteers planted more than 10 species of native trees and shrubs chosen for “wildlife habitat value and air quality benefits,” along with “soil-building groundcover, nurse seed, and fungi” meant to support long-term soil remediation on the riverbank.
Translated into plain English: they are trying to get healthier plant life established in bad soil near an abused river edge, instead of just tossing down mulch and calling it environmental progress.
That matters in Everett, where parks and open space are not some luxury issue for people with spare time. In one of the densest cities in Massachusetts, a cleaner waterfront and usable green space mean something pretty concrete. Kids use it. Families use it. People who live in triple-deckers without much yard use it.
The city’s release also leans on Everett’s designation as an “Environmental Justice community.” Fine. But the phrase only means something if it leads to visible improvement on the ground. On Saturday, it did.
There is a lesson here that City Hall should remember. Residents will show up for practical work they can see. Planting trees, cleaning riverbanks, improving a park — that is tangible. It beats the usual parade of slogans, petitions, and imported talking points.
If Van Campen’s administration wants credibility on environmental issues, this is the lane: clean up the land, expand access to the waterfront, and keep doing the unglamorous maintenance after the volunteers go home. That is not flashy. It is just how a city gets better.