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Select Board approves $10,000 from water-reserve to support Red Brook watershed project
Summary
After public presentations, the board approved $10,000 from the water-resource noncapital reserve as local match/administration for a DES-funded remediation project at Red Brook (vote 3–2). The money will pay for local administrative match and project support.
The Select Board voted to provide $10,000 from the town’s water-resource noncapital reserve to support a Department of Environmental Services-backed remediation project at Red Brook (the Wentworth Estates area). The funding will pay local match and administrative tasks that the Wentworth Watershed Association previously supplied in staff time because the town lacked a planner.
Julie Brown of the Wentworth Watershed Association explained that the site had been identified in the town’s watershed-management planning tools as one of the top local sources of phosphorus loading, and that DES funding requires a local match. "We are asking for a fraction of what has historically been provided in staff time," Brown said, adding the association will also contribute in-kind work and cash matches.
Board members who supported the $10,000 emphasized outcomes and past precedent for using the town’s Watershed funding (the board has previously provided staff-time match and cash to similar projects). Dissenting members raised concerns about using town funds for improvements on private property and asked the association to produce clearer criteria for spending the reserve. The motion passed on a roll call: Selectmen Murray, Senecal and Deshais voted yes; Thurston and Chair O’Brien voted no.
The board also asked Wolfeboro Waters to develop recommended expenditure criteria for the noncapital water-resource fund to bring back to the board, and it approved sending that assignment to the Watershed group for development and return. Implementation of the Red Brook project itself will proceed under DES approval, and project managers said construction bids could approach six figures; the $10,000 is intended as match/administration, not full construction funding.
