PIE-Rivers Projects Focus on Assessing and Mitigating Tidal Barriers

Pictured above: Peter Phippen (8 Towns and the Great Marsh) Kaitlyn Shaw (Ipswich River Watershed Association) and Liz Duff (Mass Aubudon) pool their knowledge of local tidal crossings.

In collaboration with municipal and PIE-Rivers partners, we are in the midst of the MassBays “Great Marsh Barriers Mitigation Project – a comprehensive program to mitigate aquatic barriers in the Great Marsh Area of Critical Environmental Concern region”.  The project is focused on estuarine channels and their freshwater tributaries located within the Massbays Target Assessment Areas. We use the term “aquatic barriers” to refer to human‐made structures that may impede flow, fluvial and coastal processes. The interruption of important physical, chemical and ecological processes can reduce the overall resilience of our coastal watersheds, making our communities more vulnerable to extreme weather events and our ecological resources less sustainable. This project is aimed at reducing the impact of these aquatic barriers across the region thereby enhancing its ecological health. In order to streamline the process of culvert updates throughout the region multiple meetings have taken place with PIE-Rivers Partners and Municipal officials to generate lists of projects for which both ecological priorities and municipal resilience priorities overlap.  The goal of this project is to develop implementation plans for 3-5 priority barriers in each of the study geography towns (Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Essex and Gloucester).

Another project that goes hand-in-hand with this effort is the Massachusetts Environmental Trust and Entrust funded, “Implementing a Tidal Stream Crossing Assessment Protocol in Massachusetts” project.  This collaboration between UMASS Amherst, the North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative (NAACC), the Massachusetts River and Stream Connectivity Partnership and the Ipswich River Watershed Association will culminate in a workshop session at the Massachusetts Conservation Commission Annual Environmental Conference on March 2, 2019. In preparation for the 2019 field season, the Ipswich River Watershed Association will also offer additional training on the protocol for municipalities and organizations that would like to get involved in assessing road-stream crossings in coastal areas of Massachusetts.