Great Barrington — While the section of the Housatonic River that runs through this town is in pretty good shape, the Housatonic, like rivers everywhere, continues to be threatened by stormwater runoff, though the most recent water quality tests showed “good” results.
“Stream Teams” made up of local volunteers from the various towns that sit on the river, organized by the Housatonic Valley Association (HVA), walk along the river banks or paddle through, recording what they see, “the good the bad, the ugly — the wildlife they see and concerns they have,” said Alison Dixon, HVA’s Berkshire Outreach Manager.
On Wednesday (July 22) Dixon gave the Conservation Commission a copy of HVA’s recently issued 2014 Great Barrington Stream Team Report “to get a sense of where we are now and where we are headed with projects that make the most sense for the river,” Dixon added. Stream Teams do not address water quality, which involves sampling bottom-living critters like various crustaceans, worms and insects, all known as Benthic Macroinvertebrates.
PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in Housatonic River sediment from General Electric company’s chronic upstream pollution over the last century are also not part of either analysis.
Dixon noted that last year’s Stream Team report shows issues similar to the last report, completed in 2003, which included “many outfalls of stormwater runoff going into the river and minor amounts of trash.” Other problems noted by volunteers were an increase in invasive species along riverbanks and erosion where vegetation buffers were lacking, Dixon told the commission.
Dixon said that water quality tests in 2014 showed “good river health” and “no significant impact.” The sample was collected just above the Cottage Street Bridge and compared to a reference site. The tests included measuring dissolved oxygen (the oxygen available to aquatic organisms that is related to water temperatures), nitrates and phosphates. The last water quality testing was done in 2007.
But Dixon said that stormwater runoff, which contains all manner of things from roads, farms or fields, is any river’s biggest enemy. “When you get a lot of stormwater, bacteria levels can get high and unhealthy, especially right after a storm.”
“Warm water from asphalt gets delivered into the river, and if you lose trees — shade –– that will heat up the river.” Dixon said the area behind dams can also heat up, and that brown soil churning in a turbid river heats up faster. She said that methods to keep temperatures down are important for trout and the “critters at the base of the food chain.”
Dixon said there are ways people can help, and the HVA is trying to educate people, and is working on creating a program, River Smart, to do so. HVA has already gone into the schools to educate children about storm drains.
“People don’t always know that storm drains go out to the river,” Dixon said. “With awareness, people are less likely to be dumping soapy water down the drains. I’ve seen people drop their dog waste down storm drains, and they may dump other things down the drain thinking it goes to the wastewater treatment plant, but that’s not generally the case in Berkshire County.”
In Housatonic Village, however, some storm drains are tied to the sewer lines, Dixon said, and that can be problematic. Department of Public Works Director Joe Sokul explained that indeed, this is the case, but that the connection will end after grant-funded drainage work on Front Street is completed. A federal community block grant funded the initial engineering and design work for the project, which will fix drainage and maintenance issues, and the town will apply for more grant money to make the changes, which initially, Sokul said, will cost between $600,000 and $700,000.
Incidentally, the work to fix drainage in Housatonic will also help the river. Dixon says that towns can make a difference in river health by using “better management practices” when doing infrastructure work.
The average person may feel powerless to keep a river healthy, especially one that has been abused by industrial outflow for so long, but Dixon said that every little thing helps. “People can pick up pet waste, wash cars on a lawn rather than the hard driveway, and if they live next to a river, keep vegetation shrubs and perennials at the edge…the roots help stabilize the banks.” Dixon says vegetation reduces and slows stormwater volume and the erosive force that adds more soil to the water. Keeping vegetation on the bank, however, may cramp the style of some property owners.
“Unfortunately, you don’t necessarily get the complete view of the river you want,” Dixon said. “The more property owners who understand what the best practices are…they can make an impact.”
And this town’s conservation commission is enforcing those best practices, while still trying to weigh economic development needs. At Wednesday’s meeting, an engineer representing the Holiday Inn on Stockbridge Road, which backs up near the river, had to make his case that all best practices would be used in both the building and maintenance of a parking lot extension so close to a wetlands area.
Dixon later said that she was “excited” that pervious asphalt will be used for the lot, and explained that this material “allows rainwater to percolate into the ground.” This will clean and slow the water flowing into the river. She said that due to its permeability, it was best used for parking lots or roads without a lot of traffic. She noted that The Clark Museum in Williamstown used pervious asphalt in their recent expansion.
Dixon said stormwater issues are worse in urban areas, and she was pleased by Pittsfield’s installation of nine rain gardens as part of the North Street construction project. The gardens filter soil carried in runoff, and plants in the garden will also absorb water. “This cools the stormwater,” Dixon said, “and removes 80 to 90 percent of the pollutants.” Rain gardens clean the water while reducing and slowing volume. They also remove trash and sediment. Dixon said there will be a total of 11 rain gardens on North Street by the time the work is done.
One rain garden, just north of the Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce’s Visitors Booth, will be worked into Great Barrington’s Main Street Construction project as well, according to Sokul and Town Planner Christopher Rembold. Rembold said that there was “enough room and depth to install one there,” and that because the town has same design team that worked on Pittsfield, “they have rain gardens on the brain.” Rembold said that it is his understanding that more rain gardens were not incorporated to Main Street Reconstruction Project design because of “all the lighting and conduits along the edges near the curb that wouldn’t have made them feasible.” Also, he said that rain gardens “tend to get a little messy.”
Both Sokul and Rembold said that new catch basis with deep sumps will hold more water and remove some pollutants. “Even where stormwater is piped directly to the river, it should be a better system,” Rembold said.
There are rain gardens at two sites in town. The most notable is a large one installed at the Housatonic River Walk, named for W.E.B. Du Bois, that sits between the River Walk and Church Street. Two smaller gardens were installed at Jane Iredale Mineral Cosmetics’ new headquarters in the old Bryant School building, also on Church Street.
Great Barrington-based landscape designer Craig Okerstrom-Lang, RLA, ASLA, designed the master plan, landscape design and lighting plan for the Iredale headquarters, a site that previously was entirely paved and where “all the stormwater runoff from roof and everything went directly into river,” Okerstrom-Lang said.
He also said that the Iredale parking lot was designed with a large stormwater drainage chamber beneath it. He said it was “disappointing” that while there will be drainage improvements to Main Street, that there aren’t more significant changes. He expressed concern about a large stormwater pipe that releases into the river near the skateboard park off Bridge Street.
“I think they really missed an opportunity,” he said. “It was interesting that it really wasn’t talked about. Great Barrington is way, way behind in stormwater management.” Rain gardens, he added, “are being built at private properties mostly…there is more appreciation and knowledge of these type storm water management systems.”
“Our local conservation commissions and MassDEP encourage and generally require creative storm water management for the permits they issue. Both groups review projects jointly that fall under the MA Wetlands Protection Act and Rivers Act.”
And according to the University of New Hampshire Stormwater Center, “under new Clean Water Act Phase II rules, the EPA requires local governments to develop stormwater programs.”
In the meantime, efforts to keep the river healthy will continue with immense help, Dixon says, from the Housatonic River Walk and Director Rachel Fletcher, Greenagers, the Great Barrington Land Conservancy and President Christine Ward, Great Barrington Trails and Greenways, Great Barrington Fairgrounds, Berkshire Natural Resources Council and the Department of Public Works.
