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Date: 7/7/2022
SOUTHWICK — Town officials said that the situation at the North Pond Conservation Area has become a “serious problem” as the town grapples with keeping the beach clean from trash and recurring violations from visitors to the area.
Select Board Chair Russ Fox said during the June 27 Select Board meeting that the situation at the conservation area has made it extremely difficult to comply with regulations from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Department of Fish and Game.
“There is not supposed to be a beach there. All that land down there is supposed to grow back into its natural state,” said Fox. “That isn’t happening if you have all these people down there tying up their boats, having fires and cooking.”
Fox suggested opening a dialogue between the town’s Select Board, Lake Management Committee, Planning Board, Police Department, Board of Health and Conservation Commission on how to handle the situation.
Select Board member Doug Moglin said that some of the problems have likely been coming from people who are visiting Congamond Lake from out of town.
Though the violations may be coming from non-Southwick residents, Moglin said it is still the town’s responsibility to conserve the area.
“People from town need to step up, they all stepped up to pay for this thing. It’s their investment, their natural resource,” said Moglin.
Moglin said he saw a troop of Girl Scouts cleaning up trash in the conservation area recently, and remarked that it seemed like one could go out and pick up litter there every weekend and still pick up a lot of it.
Conservation Coordinator Sabrina Pooler said that the situation at the North Pond Conservation Area is an “embarrassing problem,” but one that could hopefully easily be solved.
Fox at one point during the Select Board meeting remarked that the DEP and Fish and Game had suggested erecting a fence to cordon off the problem areas. Pooler said a fence may potentially be a further violation by the letter of the state regulations, which require that the conservation area remain in its natural state and in an “open condition.”
“Putting up a fence would interfere with its natural state and open condition. Wild animals wouldn’t be able to go through a fence,” said Pooler.
She said that she has seen signs of residents stepping up to help fix the problem. Recently she said she was walking through the area looking to pick up trash herself, when she happened upon a group of teenagers who had started a fire pit, and had already collected eight bags of trash that they were waiting to have picked up by the Public Works Department.
Pooler said she informed them that the firepit was not allowed, but she was happy to see people out there cleaning up the area on their own.
Cleaning up litter helps, but does little if subsequent visitors continue to leave their trash in the conservation area. Pooler said that they are hoping to put up signs in the area to better mark that it is a conservation area where many recreational activities are not allowed. She said that with signs, and a couple more days of cleaning the conservation area, it can be much closer to its natural state than it has recently been.
“We want everyone to be able to enjoy that area and have access to that area, but we want the wildlife to be able to flourish in that area as well,” said Pooler.
Fox said later in the week on June 30 that the town may seek a memorandum of understanding with the state that would allow Southwick’s police to enforce the state regulations on the property, something they are technically not currently allowed to do. He said that signage will help, but that the regulations have to also actually be enforced.