CRC looking ahead to new leadership, expanding mission

Date: 12/12/2022

GREENFIELD – Over the last decade, the Connecticut River Conservancy (CRC), which has offices in Greenfield and Hartford but calls the entire stretch of the Connecticut River watershed its service area, has seen growth in almost every program area.

Interim Director Ron Rhodes, who took the helm in October when departing director Andy Fisk left to become the bureau chief for natural resources at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said the past decade at CRC has seen a tremendous amount of growth in the staff and in the budget under Fisk’s leadership.

Rhodes said when he was originally hired in 2011 as a part-time assistant river steward in Vermont and New Hampshire, he was the 12th staff person hired. “Now, we’re up to 22. The staff has grown; the budget has gone from $1 million to $3 million,” he said.

Rhodes became river steward, then director of restoration as the program grew. His job’s main focus has been on removing dams along the river and its tributaries, and restoring its banks. In 2014, the program removed its first dam, and is now removing three every year.

CRC just announced that the organization has received grant funding for the removal of the old Blake Higgins Dam on the Saxtons River in Vermont from the Conservation Alliance, a national organization which awards competitive grants to projects that protect the nation’s most vulnerable species and habitats.

Likewise, Rhodes said staff and volunteers planted 5,000 native wetland trees purchased from New England Wetland Plants in the first year of that program, and “now we’re doing between 6,000 and 8,000 every spring and fall.”

The invasive species removal program, overseen by Massachusetts River Steward Kelsey Wentling, is also growing, as is the Source to Sea Cleanup, which is in its 26th year. Wentling said 1,200 to 1,500 volunteers go out every September to haul garbage off the banks and out of the river. “That’s been a pretty steady big one-time year event,” she said.

Volunteers also go out and collect water samples from 150 locations, and bring them to the water quality monitoring lab in Greenfield. A web search for “Is It Clean?” yields six sites now managed by the organization at connecticutriver.us.

“The programs and staff we have in place are ongoing programs, and we’re growing those programs,” Wentling said.

“A lot of the other stuff has been a steady growth of our work. We all spend all winter writing grants and fundraising, and our members and donors step up,” Rhodes said.

“That’s the general story – a decade of growth, and certainly over its 70 years, major growth,” Rhodes added. He said the organization, which celebrated 70 years in 2022, started when private citizens banded together: “a doctor and his wife, and a couple of other folks – a small band of volunteers.”

When asked about the current status of the water quality in the Connecticut River, Wentling answered. “I’d say there’s been incredible improvement, especially in the last 50 years since the Clean Water Act, which addressed a lot of point-of-source pollution. There are still some challenges; pollution from nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen, and new emerging pollutants, like PFAS,” she said.

Wentling said a unified water quality study is done annually at the mouth of the river in Connecticut.

“This year we got a B on the report card, which is graded on oxygen content, plant life, clarity. The main thing that gave us a B was because of water clarity, probably due to heavy rain and nutrients getting into the river. The grade is not from this past year, but from two years prior,” she said.

Wentling said the new piece that everyone is incorporating is environmental justice and inclusion: “How do we update our programs? How do we do a better job of creating access for all?”

Wentling said access is their big new goal. “Access as a primary goal is really important. It helps us to bring people into all of the other goals, and helps people to form a relationship with the local river. We don’t have a good answer at the moment, but it is a discussion that we are starting, figuring out how to provide access in a way that’s sustainable.”

The organization has started a big multi-year project in Holyoke’s only public access to the Connecticut River at the Holyoke Rows Rowing Club at Jones Ferry, working on dock improvements, bilingual signage and a commissioned fine arts mural by economist and urban artist Alvilda Sophia Anaya-Alegria of Springfield, to improve access and the relationship people in the city have with the river.

Director of Communications Diana Chaplin, who started one month ago, said projects such as the Source-to-Sea Cleanup help to develop that relationship.

“From the global perspective, one of the best ways to make an impact is at the local bio level, as well as being able to connect people to the river and have that personal experience. People who get involved in the Source-to-Sea Cleanup have that personal impact,” Chaplin said.

Asked about climate change, Rhodes said it is an underlying issue. “We don’t have a climate change program or a dedicated staffer, but everything we do we look at it through that lens – in the programs, removing dams, planting trees that absorb carbon, removing invasive species all have that lens.”

Wentling said the CRC recently commented on regulations related to the severity of droughts and frequency of droughts over the last five years, supporting the amendment to the Water Management Act to reduce nonessential outdoor water use during droughts.

She said they do not support the exemption for golfing greens and all public parks and fields regardless of drought conditions; and advocated for those facilities to be accounted for in a tiered watering system.

“The drought had a significant impact on the Connecticut River,” Wentling said.

“With 22 staff, it’s hard for all of us to share all we’re doing and keep all of that information. It’s a really big portfolio of work that we’re involved in and partnering with others, including state agencies, federal U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and U.S. Department of Agriculture – which is often a good source of funding – and cities and towns,” Rhodes said.

“The strength of our organization is in our partnerships. We’ve got great staff – we have an awesome team right now. We’ve got good members, volunteers and donors, who are the core of our organization. We don’t do much just by ourselves, we are almost always partnering with multiple organizations and groups to do our projects,” he added.

Rhodes said the board of trustees, who are all volunteers, have formed a search committee for a new director, and the staff has been working on providing information to the board. He said they will hire an outside search team, as they did when Fisk was hired.

Rhodes said he hopes that a permanent director will be in place by June. “I need to be back out in the field removing dams come July,” he said.

When asked how many, he said, “There are two lifetimes of dams left to remove. There are thousands of old mill dams, and dams that someone built to create a swimming hole.”

Rhodes said fortunately other organizations such as Trout Unlimited and American Rivers are also involved, along with various local watershed groups who are tackling some of theirs. For more information, visit www.ctriver.org.