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Conservation district offers Bakersfield help scoping stormwater, riparian and culvert projects
Summary
Arena Brand of the Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District briefed the Bakersfield Select Board on a municipal outreach initiative that can help the town identify and pursue nonregulatory projects — including Brown's Pond damrelated work, a stormwater master plan, and a road erosion inventory — and encouraged officials to submit project ideas before the end of the calendar year.
Arena Brand, who identified herself as a representative of the Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District, told the Bakersfield Select Board on April 13 that her office can assist municipalities with project scoping, seeking funding and managing design — though the FCNRCD does not itself pay for construction.
"We have funding to help you pursue funding for any projects that we identify," Brand said, describing recent local work such as the Johnson's Mill Dam removal and ongoing riparian plantings in Bakersfield. She said the district is prioritizing nonregulatory projects tied to rivers, roads, stormwater, forest and wetlands and listed three candidate initiatives that emerged from her preliminary review: Brown's Pond dam-related work, a town stormwater master plan, and a road erosion inventory.
Brand said the outreach work is on a relatively quick timeline: municipalities should identify and begin developing potential projects within the calendar year so the district and regional partners can pursue preliminary engineering and design grants. "We are talking kind of a quick time frame," she said, and invited conservation-commission members and landowners to coordinate site visits so the FCNRCD can scope opportunities that do not always appear in planning documents.
Select Board members said privately owned sites — notably a damaged wetland area along Belvedere Road — and municipal culverts are both possible candidates if landowners are willing to participate. Chair emphasized the practicality of starting with owners who are already engaged: "Mary Baker has been very active with us; she'd be a great place to start," one member said.
The district asked the town to route follow-up contact through Carolyn (a conservation-commission contact on the record) so staff can gather landowner contact information and arrange a scoping visit. Brand said the Northeast Regional Planning Commission could act as a clean-water service provider for subsequent preliminary engineering and design work if projects are prioritized by the town.
