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Date: 8/30/2023
CHESTER — On Aug. 22, Tom O’Shea, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game, along with other state officials gathered at the Chester Railway Station to announce the municipalities that would be receiving awards in the latest round of the Culvert Replacement Municipal Assistance Grant Program.
After being introduced by Chester Town Administrator Donald Humason, O’Shea said Massachusetts had over 8 inches of rain in June and July. He said the state anticipates more rainfall, which he said over time will be more powerful and intense.
“Streams need to be more resilient. Chester has water all around. We appreciate your forward thinking on these projects … which improve habitats for fish and wildlife resiliency, offer risk reduction and in some places provide more access,” O’Shea said.
Chester was one of 14 towns to receive a total of $811,000 in culvert replacement design grants, along with Huntington, South Hadley, Egremont, Great Barrington and Richmond in Western Massachusetts, and others in central and eastern parts of the state.
Chester’s grant award of $54,297 will go to the design of culvert replacements for Abbott Brook. Huntington received an award of $42,000 for the design of Bromley Road culvert replacements.
Department of Ecological Restoration Director Beth Lambert said the purpose of the grant program is to jumpstart culvert replacements. She said once the culverts are designed and permitted, it is easier for municipalities to get funding for construction either from their program or other grant programs.
Lambert said the DER division deals with aging infrastructure, river and wetland restoration. She said they will be taking on new wetland restoration projects, and are hoping to expand the grants for culvert programs. Lambert also acknowledged the work of the municipalities and partner organizations.
“Behind each project is a grants team or individual dedicated to going above and beyond,” she said, listing departments of public works, municipal officials and watershed associations.
For Chester and Huntington, the watershed association behind the culvert program is the Wild and Scenic Westfield River Committee.
Wild and Scenic representative Cindy Delpapa said the committee started looking at the culverts in the 10 towns along the Wild and Scenic portions of the Westfield River eight years ago, when they invested in a survey and official assessment of culverts, contracting with CEI Engineering Associates Inc.
Delpapa said through its multi-year stream crossing assessment work, the committee was able to measure, photograph and rank road crossings and culverts through most of the Westfield River watershed. Using this information, the committee identified a number of road-stream crossings with significant ecological and connectivity issues (such as perched, collapsed or undersized culverts) and made a priority list.
From that list, committee members went to the towns and asked them which project they considered to be their top priority. The committee then did a pilot on three of the culverts, in Windsor, Becket and Cummington, all of which moved forward to the construction phase.
Delpapa said five of nine culverts submitted in this round were selected. She said the Wild and Scenic committee also keeps the towns informed about grant opportunities, especially for the construction phase.
For Chester, the Abbott Brook culvert, which has failed multiple times, was a priority. As described by Wild and Scenic Outreach Coordinator Meredyth Babcock, Abbott Brook is in a huge watershed area surrounded by hills, which drain down to the culvert crossing on Abbott Hill Road. She said the problem is complicated by the fact that this is a dirt road.
At a recent listening session on dirt roads in Chester, Abbott Hill resident Lora Wade, whose property abuts the culvert, said the road gets washed out every year.
“When we had heavy rains in 2021, we were stranded for two days,” she said, adding that there is no other exit to that road.
Wade also attended the grant announcement and the site visit that followed to the culvert at Abbott Brook. She said ever since her family of four moved to Chester in 2020, the culvert has been their focus, motivating her to join the town’s Conservation Commission.
A nurse who has to get to work, Wade said she has to have an emergency plan in place if she can’t get out, which happened once this summer and twice last year.
Currently there is a temporary culvert in place at the crossing. On the site visit, Lambert said it looked like there was not much water in the stream. She said during a rainstorm, the water flow exceeds the culvert’s capacity, and typically it blows out annually, as it did on the other side of the culvert that had collapsed.
Also announced at the meeting were Regional Restoration Partnerships program awards, including $199,899 to the Housatonic Valley Association for its “Berkshire Clean, Cold and Connected” project, and Priority Projects program awards, which gave out the largest grants of $4,400,000 to the town of Wellfleet and $600,00 to the Friends of the Herring River for Herring River Estuary restoration. Lambert said the priority project will restore over 800 acres of estuary in Wellfleet on upper Cape Cod, and is the largest wetland restoration project on the east coast north of Florida.