Minutes for
Meeting of
Location: SRPEDD
Call
to Order
Committee Chair Jim Ross called the meeting to
order at
Members attending:
Francis Pereira, Pat
Rogers, Bill Taylor, Middleboro
Jim Ross, Raynham
Aria Brissette, Jasmine
Tanguay, Maryan Nowak,
Jack Traynor, Halifax
Nancy Durfee,
Doug
Robertson, interested party
Karen
Holmes, guest speaker
The minutes of June’s committee meeting were
approved with the following correction:
1. The minutes should read “Taunton
River Wild and Scenic River Study Committee
Minutes for Meeting of 6/18/03”, not
The
1. The Forge River Tributary Committee wants to
meet with the Highway Department regarding stormwater mitigation associated
with the Route 104 widening project.
2. There is a garage/repair shop on the
On August 4th there was an Action
Planning Meeting to draft the Action Steps.
A lesson learned was that registered letters to
landowners do not go over well. Some
recipients of the letters felt intimidated and/or turned off by having to sign
for the letter that informed them of the survey and asked their
permission. In the future, a less formal
letter and method of delivery would probably be more successful.
The next river to be done will be the
Nemasket. There will be a meeting on
August 21st to divide up the Nemasket into sections and relationship
build. At that time they will decide on
the training date.
Kitty had a successful meeting.
The river is beautiful with regards to wildlife.
The following activities are done inside the
Taunton River Corridor and everyone is encouraged to volunteer:
The North American Butterfly Association does
surveys on the
There is a dragonfly migration count going on.
The Monarch Watch out of the
Be a Nest Box Ambassador through
The Frog Watch - National Wildlife Federation –
looks for deformities in frogs.
The lack of public access points throughout the
corridor makes it difficult to perform these activities. When Karen leads activities she often has to
ask permission from private landowners to get access to the rivers. The Town of
Jim asked Karen whether or not the recreation
opportunities on the
Final plans should be coming out. It was mentioned that the Route 88 Bridge
over the
The Riverways Program survived with overwhelming
support in the house and senate.
Bill recommended hiring Rachel from
Adopt-A-Stream 1 day per week to work on the management plan. She would be a 1099 consultant. A motion was made to allow SRPEDD to have the
discretion to hire a qualified consultant to work on the plan one day per
week. The full Committee unanimously
approved the motion.
A Project Summary/Proposal was included along
with August’s meeting agenda. The Town
of
Bill N gave an update on this project, which
will refurbish/beautify Robertson’s Mill.
The building will be used for affordable housing and retail shops. A river walk is also proposed for the site to
complement the trail on the opposite side of the river.
A letter asking for comments on the Expanded ENF
Form was included along with August’s meeting agenda. The project proposes to
put in a liquefied natural gas storage tank at a terminal in
Bill N proposed that when the ENF comes out we
as a committee submit a letter to the state that suggests that the WWTP to do a
low flow/contribution study of the river, especially considering the WWTP
supposedly contributes up to 70% of the river’s instream flow at times. Pat Rogers vehemently objected to us getting
involved in the issue and questioned who on the committee was technically
qualified enough to make such a request.
He also stated that the Committee shouldn’t be getting political and
that the WWTP had to get NPDES permits so we should leave it up to the relevant
state and federal agencies to determine what information needs to be
collected. He didn’t feel the issue of
the WWTP upgrade was relevant to our study.
Several people on the Committee disagreed and felt the issue was
relevant to our study and we should submit a comment letter when the time
comes. The Committee decided that Jim Ross would write a letter to the
appropriate agency that brings these issues to their
attention and asks them to consider requiring the WWTP to do a low flow/contribution
analysis as part of the EIR. Perhaps we
could even get some of the TRWA water quality data analyzed too.
Ruth Geoffroy’s email has some good suggestions
on resources we can use to possibly get more information on the archaeologic
resources of the
Pat Rogers mentioned that there are five bridges
in
Pat Rogers will follow up with Jack Sheppard
regarding the public access board’s plans to create/improve public access sites
on the river. There were plans to put a
conservation restriction on property at the Bridgewater House of Corrections
and improve two sites on the property but with budget cuts and state government
reorganization he’s not sure what has happened.
Karen Pelto couldn’t be at the meeting to
discuss this project, which will hopefully restore alewives to the Satucket
River. She wanted to know if we as a committee could push this thing
forward. It appears they are fine
without our help but if would be a good idea to include this in our management
plan. I.E. support their efforts but further involvement isn’t necessary on our
part. She will try and make the
September meeting to give a presentation on the topic.
The next meeting date will be on September 10th
in Middleboro and the timeline will be a major discussion topic since time is
running out.
Submitted by Aria Brissette