The Organization for the Assabet River (OAR) is your local watershed organization.

Our mission is to protect, preserve, and enhance the Assabet River, its tributaries, and watershed.

The Assabet River, a federally designated Wild and Scenic River, is located within eastern Massachusetts and flows for 31 miles from its headwaters in Westborough, through nine cities and towns including Acton, to the town of Concord, where it joins the Sudbury River to form the Concord River.

The Assabet watershed is our home. It embodies our sense of place in the landscape. The AssabetRiver, its tributaries, and associated wetlands provide scenic beauty, drinking water, wildlife habitat, recreational opportunities, agricultural irrigation, wastewater assimilation, and hydroelectric power to the 177,000 residents of the 177 square mile watershed. A watershed is a complex web of interrelated components human, plant, animal, soil, air, and water. A change in one part may be reflected throughout the system. The health of the river and our community depends on regaining and sustaining the fragile balance between competing demands placed on our water resources. We all benefit when water resources are protected.

OAR's goal is to bring the Assabet River up to the state-mandated water quality standard of fishable and swimmable.