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| Municipal Building, 41 South Main St., Hanover, NH / 603-643-0708 | |||
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Applications Rural Study Group 2007 |
Girl Brook Watershed ProjectThe Town of Hanover, Dartmouth College, and the Hanover Conservation Council have jointly received a $5,000 grant from the Upper Connecticut River Mitigation and Enhancement Fund to study options for restoring the ecological integrity of the brook, its environs, and its tributaries. A copy of the letter addressed to landowners in the watershed is below on this page. As more information becomes available on this project, it will be posted on this site. Dear Neighbors, As a landowner in Hanover's Girl Brook watershed, you may be interested to know that the town, Dartmouth College, and the Hanover Conservation Council have jointly received a $5,000 grant from the Upper Connecticut River Mitigation and Enhancement Fund to study options for restoring the ecological integrity of the brook, its environs, and its tributaries. Landowner and community input is an essential part of this project, which is intended to provide basic understanding and to formulate goals for remediative proposals that may be developed later. Girl Brook is an important natural and community resource that collects runoff from its 1,230-acre watershed - a significant portion of the most highly developed area of the town, the college campus, and the surrounding hillsides. The brook passes through the Hanover golf course and Pine Park to discharge into the Connecticut River approximately two miles north of the Ledyard bridge. Not long ago dairy farms, pastures, and forest lands came right up to the edges of downtown. Cows grazed where houses, offices, gas stations, and playing fields now stand. Small streams ran down off Balch Hill, Velvet Rocks, and what is now the Ray School area, joining together to form Girl Brook. Over time, as the intown area developed, parts of Girl Brook and its feeder streams were routed underground into storm drains. The main stem of the brook is now a dry ditch except in times of snow melt and intense rain, and its confluence with the river is marked by extensive mudflats from upstream erosion. The brook has been further impacted by fluctuating water levels in the river as Wilder Dam artificially raises and lowers water levels; by speedy runoff from rooftops and asphalt; by loss of vegetation; and by increasing amounts of pollutants. Nevertheless, the brook is not a hopeless case. It still offers much scenic value, performs a variety of wetlands filtration and runoff control functions, and supports a variety of plants and animals. We believe the functions it serves and the amenities it offers to the community could be substantially increased, to the benefit of us all. From a field of a dozen applicants, the Girl Brook Committee has selected New England Environmental, Inc. as our consultant to assist with data collection and analysis. Mr. Michael Marcus (Mickey) and his coworkers will be doing field work starting in mid-June. You may see him walking in or beside the stream bed, or near culverts and storm drains, perhaps with a video camera, recording stream conditions. He will be carrying a letter of introduction explaining his activities. Do stop and talk with him to find out what he is doing. He's an interesting and enthusiastic guy! We hope to have this phase of the project completed by late fall. We expect that Mickey will have outlined his view of the problems and opportunities by that time, and be able to offer options for action. There will be one or more public presentations of the findings of the study. If you wish to know more about this study, to offer personal observations of the brook's behavior and history, have any concerns, or want to discuss Mickey's passage by your property as he follows the brook and feeder stream courses, contact Vicki Smith, who is the committee chair, at 603-603-0742, ext. 113, or vicki.smith@hanovernh.org after June 1. Information will be posted as it becomes available on the town website at http://www.hanovernh.org. Sincerely,
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