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Date: 9/19/2023
HOLYOKE — Of the $31.5 million recently announced by the Healey-Driscoll Administration in Climate Resiliency Funding to communities through the state’s Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program, Holyoke was awarded $192,000 for green infrastructure design and land protection in the Day Brook Watershed.
The MVP grant program provides communities with funding and technical assistance to support the climate resilience planning process and implement priority actions to adapt to climate change. In April, Gov. Maura Healey launched MVP Planning 2.0, which serves as the next phase of the flagship program.
Director of Conservation and Sustainability Yoni Glogower told Reminder Publishing this funding will go toward continued work of the city’s Day Brook Watershed in hopes of a project that eliminates water run off into the sewage system.
“In Holyoke we’ve been taking a hard look at our infrastructure and whether there are more opportunities for green infrastructure that would allow us to capture some of the stormwater that falls on our city and basically allow it to safely infiltrate the soil instead of going into our sewer system,” Glogower said.
The Day Brook Watershed was the subject of a planning study the city performed in collaboration with Pioneer Valley Planning Commission in 2019. While likely unknown to most residents, the Day Brook Watershed is known as “Holyoke’s hidden stream” as it is in part completely underground since 1926 due to flooding concerns. It originates in forest land west of I-91 and only sees daylight in the Community Field Park before heading into an underground pipe on its way to the Connecticut River.
The “secret stream” as it is called on the PVPC’s detailing of the project, crosses unseen under significant Holyoke locations such as Beech Street and the Holyoke High School campus before passing through the Holyoke Wastewater Treatment Plant. Most of the watershed’s route joins with the city’s sanitary sewer as part of the combined sewer system of Holyoke.
“So, when we have these storm events, it bypasses the treatment plant that it usually goes to — to avoid it backing up — and it just discharges directly into the Connecticut River. The goal of this project was to look at the Day Brook Watershed more generally, the areas where stormwater joins to go into the underground stream and really look at opportunities for anything that might be done to reduce storm flow and floods to the system to reduce the risk that that would happen,” Glogower explained.
Glogower said this was the subject of the PVPC’s study in 2019 and now with the recent MVP grant the goal is to build on some of their recommendations and actually design some of the systems and key areas within the watershed. The project is set to begin this fall after City Council approval of the grant.
“This grant will be for design services pretty much and then concept designs elsewhere in the watershed that can be later developed into full permitting documents,” Glogower said.
These specific MVP and climate resiliency grants allow for municipalities to tackle climate change with state support when they might otherwise not be able to afford it. It has been part of a state effort to combat climate change and be proactive knowing all the potential dangers if no action is taken. If it wasn’t for this funding Glogower said the city would only have its own general funding to fight for in order to support a project like this.
“It’s really valuable that we have these extra resources. Dealing with climate change means we need additional tools to address problems that have always been a problem for the city but only being exacerbated in an era where, as we saw this last summer, a really heavy and more frequent stormwater and storm events that’s really pushing our infrastructure to its limit,” Glogower said.
He continued, “I think what’s really cool about this funding is there’s a big focus on environmental justice communities in the commonwealth and a big emphasis on community outreach and education, so another part of the grant is actually going to fund a school curriculum program at Sullivan School. We’re going to be working with a school and Enchanted Circle Theater to develop an artists residency where seventh graders are going to learn about green infrastructure. They’re going to meet the engineers that are designing the systems as part of the grant. Then they’re going to create their own interpretive materials related to the importance of keeping our rivers clean and doing what we can to make our cities livable for the climate change future.”
Glogower said the plan for next year is to secure another MVP grant to continue this work as the only other option to trying to secure the funding through the city’s general fund. He added he believes it is important for ongoing collaboration in these types of projects in order to show the state progress has been made and they are prepared to continue work with a new grant.