To the editor:
Every day I walk down the road that splits the Stockbridge watershed lake and a lily pad pond.
The pond has a very large beaver hut and a small beaver dam and supports river otters, painted turtles, massive snapping turtles (the size of sea turtles who nest on the shore for their eggs in the same manner that the sea turtles do), and even a deer with a healed broken leg who has survived on the pond edge somehow.
In the spring and the summer, when the water is high, it flows over the small beaver dam, which is lower than the earthen dam and flows gently over rocks and tumbles past homes that border it.
A couple of weeks ago, the Stockbridge Water Department broke up the beaver dam, and even though I used to see them every day in the morning, I haven’t seen the beavers since.
When I contacted the Stockbridge water department, the Stockbridge Select Board, and the Select Board administrator, I was given a boilerplate answer that it was broken up in order to protect the earthen dam and the houses downstream.
Odd. Because when the lake was at its highest and the lily pad pond was also at its highest and flowing over the beaver dam, there was no damage, there was no risk, and there was no effort to break up the beaver dam.
The September drought, however, lowered the level of the lake and the pond to the point that it was no longer flowing over the beaver dam, and therefore the creeks that flowed by the houses were just a trickle.
The conclusion seems obvious based on the evidence that they only decided the beaver dam was risky when it was at its lowest level, and the only impact was the aesthetic elements of the homeowners downstream.
I am told that a beaver dam over a year old becomes federal jurisdiction, which would mean that Stockbridge not only acted irresponsibly, but also illegally.
I am going to contact the Division of Environmental Biology, but perhaps it is time for another Thanksgiving caper, Ă la “Alice’s Restaurant,” as apparently Stockbridge has not changed much. Arlo, are you with me?
Steve Schulz
West Stockbridge
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