##VIDEO ID:X2yZns7s28g## um thank you for coming uh we have the municipal vulnerability committee here uh C want you to introduce yourself hi my name is CCE as winsky and I am the student rep um I'm Caroline NES Tim Hy ma Swedeland Chris Curtis I Pete La thank you and we have with us tonight um Nick Miller uh who has it works with field geology who's been working with us and the uh Franklin Conservation District actually since um Irene and we're thrilled of death that he's doing this program tonight and then we have Rosalie um who is uh from E GZA who has done all the mathematical input on this and we're really really excited to have her tonight too so um I'll turn it over to both of you all right thanks Carolyn um so Rosalie and I are going to do this presentation together um I'm going to do most of the talking at the beginning um but don't worry because you will get to hear from her at the end um so anyway uh we're here at the CommunityWide Forum to talk about the assessment of bloody Brook and Sugarloaf Brook otherwise known as blacksmith Brook um this project is a municipal vulnerability preparedness project funded under a couple of Grants um an action Grant and also a C Grant for a MVP 2.0 um project um and if you have specific questions on that I feel like someone else would be better to answer them than me um but that's what we're here today to talk about um so just to get into it a little bit um the assessment of the two Brooks um the purpose of this assessment is to better understand the causes of flooding and to come up with some uh ideas and identify some uh possibilities for mitigating that flight apologize that the uh the print is pretty small on that I'm not sure why it's looking different on the screen but um hopefully you can read at least some of what you see on the screen um so you know flooding is not anything new um it tends to be something that we're dealing with quite often here and you can see in this photo on the bottom uh down by the weekly line on Lower bloody Brook uh where the flo was coming across the road um so just outlining the tasks of the current project uh we have a did a Waters shet tour in stream Recon of both streams um that included a uh review of previous studies so one previous study I'm showing you a slide from the lower left hand corner which is a storm water um assessment that was done by furog a drainage assessment of the town of Deerfield um so that's the kind of information that we have access to uh we also have access to another fop project that was just completed at the end of last year which is a watershed based plan for bloody Brook um also included in this project is some archival U research and looking at historic Maps old documents um trying to figure out what the history of the Watershed is and how it's been changed over the past several centuries field mapping and geomorphic assessment of both streams we've got uh hydrologic and hydraulic modeling which Rosie will be talking about um that's kind of like a big uh part of this project um that everyone is is really excited about um and then as part of uh the results once we've been able to Crunch all the data we're going to do some project identification and prioritization looking specifically at how to mitigate flooding um and once those projects have been prioritized uh conceptual design work um to come up with some different ideas and potential um routes the town can take to to help mitigate that so the uh the flooding and erosion hazards that the town of Deerfield has been facing are nothing new um whether we're talking about big floods as you see on the upper left which is during tropical storm Irene where portions of i91 were closed during flooding or what we're talking about in more uh frequent kind of nuisance flooding that seems to be happening uh more and more often and I already showed you that picture but that's the lower BL right so this kind of flooding whether it be just water sitting on the flood plane whether it is uh water down in the the lowlands actually flooding out people's cars right or whether that is flood water actually encroaching into uh land owner raran land owner property um these are some photos that were shared with me by uh St and Michael ltin um showing some flood water that actually got into their garage um and also showing their backyard uh inundated and and over the last couple decades this kind of flooding has become pretty common place along bloody Brook um so this kind of flooding you know we're seeing other examples of how common it is this is on the upper left that is a photo of a house at the corner of C Lether drive and North Main Street this homeowner actually I can put up this but I don't think the uh the pointer is working on the screen for some reason hopefully you can see from where you're sitting that there's sandbags along all the doors at the ground floor of this house so flooding is becoming frequent enough that they're actually blocking off water from getting into their um ground floor of their uh dwelling so uh quite an issue and that is why this MVP project um was started and that's hopefully what we're going to be looking at with the hydraulic model but all this flooding has a history and it's a legacy of uh historic land use so in when the uh when the area was colonized um there was something called the land clearance right where they cut down all the trees that has been described in the literature as a near total deforestation and that peaked in 1850 regionally um this is an old photo uh showing A View From Sugarloaf um it's undated but fairly early um showing you know partially deforested Hillside and uh Farm Fields below um that have been cleared for agriculture so we cleared all the trees you know mobilizing sediment from the Uplands all that sediment is delivered to the farm uh to the flat flood plane bottom um that flood plane used to be a wetland right so historically in New England um we had some broad forested Wetlands that that's what the landscape was it was very um you know was not very common to have a single thread Scream the reason we have the single thread screen is because the wetlands were drained for agriculture right so all those Wetlands were drained you create a channelized stream um you reclaim that area and this happened we know in Deerfield fairly early right because we know that the area was first settled by colonists around 1660 and um the early uh writings about this describe bloody Brook and the area where Captain Le had that uh you know battle with the Native Americans uh in 1675 that area is described as a swampy Thicket right so it was a swampy area cleared for agriculture we know it's clear for agriculture because he was actually bringing crops to Market when that battle took place right so just think about what the area was under natural conditions it probably wasn't a single thread straight chingle through any area that's largely agricultural right so that's a departure from the natural conditions that's you know kind of what I want to drive home here so we drained the wetlands and we cut down a lot of the trees and another way we manipulated this landscape is by manipulating the channels themselves so instead of having a multi-threaded wetland channel uh you have a single thread channel that is uh straightened and you can see in the image on the left which is an early image undated U from No Name Brook near the Confluence with bloody Brook um that is a straight channel uh there's you know looks like a roding Banks it looks like there's livestock grazing on that area right and then on the right that's a modern photo bloody Rook showing that straight channel so even if you do have a single thread channel it's not natural for to be straight but in bloody Brook and Sugarloaf blacksmith Brook it's pretty much straight everywhere you look here's another couple examples of that on the left you have a view Upstream from the elementary school showing the straighten Channel and on the right you have a downstream from Captain Le drive on Bloody Brook showing the straight Channel and you actually have uh log ribbing lining the channel in this location so this is a highly manipulated stream system another way that this stream system has been manipulated is with damning this is an old photo showing the lower portion of sugar for Blacksmith Brook uh you have a couple uh dams uh with Mill ponds upstream I believe there was a Grist Mill and Sawmill down in this area uh also note that there's not a lot of trees growing on the side of the Hillside and um this F these fields have been converted to Agriculture and uh so part of the you know what seems normal to us now but wouldn't have been the natural condition we also upon this uh upon this landscape where we've drained the wetlands and channelized the stream we encroached and and had historic development and along the banks of the stream right so the railroad came to Deerfield in 1846 runs right through the wers shade going from north to south crossing the stream in several places um you can see that on the map on the right which is from 1871 um also showing the straightened bloody Brook Channel at the back of everyone's lot with the houses you know encroaching upon that flood plane on this encroached you know flood plane surface we uh have a lot of development and some of that development has been here for a long time but some of that development is you know kind of you know been gaining in recent you know decades and so one thing we look at when we're talking about a watershed is imperious surface so the imper impervious surface being areas where water can't percolate through an INF into the groundwater right these are areas like rooftops uh these are areas of Roads parking lots areas like on the the side of the road here where there's no median it just is uh you know paved from the the road all the way over to the sidewalk all these are areas that were in the water the rain falls on that area it's going to run off right and so the impervious surface in bloody Brook Watershed is 9% which is pretty high um especially for Western Mass you know maybe it wouldn't be high for Boston but we're not used to having a watershed that's that kind of urbanized and one thing with the uh with impervious surface is that it increases your the peaks of your floods right so the water hits that pavement and runs off into the stream um is not able to soak back down into the groundwater and be a groundwater recharge and when that water um runs off into the stream it's carrying everything with it so if it falls on i91 or 5 and 10 where they've been saling the road you've got a lot of chloride which is a major you know water impairment um if you have water running under the the parking lot you know it's carrying any oil petroleum anything else into the stream and unfortunately uh in these watersheds we're talking about there's not much of an uh riparian buffer to stop those pollutants from running into the into the uh the streams right so under normal circumstances natural circumstances you'd have shrub shrubs and trees uh you know that would be providing a buffer to you know slow the the delivery of those pollutants to the the stream um but in bloody Brook and Sugarloaf uh blacksmith Brooks there is in often cases a very impaired buffer um so that's not a thing necessarily on the image on the left is from 1910 it's an old postcard I found uh you can see a gentleman standing on side of the bloody Brook um there's no buffer right it's pasture or mode or something all the way up to the banks um so that's going to have you know an impact on the stability of the banks but it's also going to have a impact on water and pollutant like coming straight into the the stream without being interrupted by that r p buffer um and that is the case on most of bloody Brook and Sh Brooks um from our stream reconnaissance that photo on the right is from upper reaches of bloody Brook so we talked about a little bit about uh you know impaired buffer uh and one of the reasons that's important is is these pollutants is these water quality impairments so Mass CP uh maintains a list of impaired waterways it's integrated list of waters and for bloody Brook there's four impairments that are listed for um for bloody Brook one is ecoli and as far as I can tell from everything I've read the source of that eoli is unknown um but there's also an impairment for total phosphorus um so eoli and total phosphorus could potentially have some uh relationship to the agricultural land use in the wers shed which is 34% of bloody Brook Watershed is is um agricultural land so just over a third it's fairly large um bloody Brook is also listed as an impairment for turbidity so it's the cloudiness of Mer in the water right so there's a lot of clay and Sil it's a fairly fine grain substrate in a lot of the stream and that uh goes into suspension easily and so you've got this like murky uh you know cloudy water right that's turbidity um it's also about very low dissolved oxygen and so that could have several sources um decaying organic matter you know could be a source of lower dissolved oxygen and another thing that's not listed on here is the fact that several areas of bloody Brook and Sugarloaf blacksmith Brooks are actually ephemeral right so it's not always running with water there a lot of areas where it's like ponded discontinuous kind of stagnant pools of water um especially you know we did a lot of this field work in uh last November when it's was fairly dry and uh you didn't really get water in bloody Brook until you got down below Jackson Road and even then it was fairly discontinuous um so if you're talking about habitat and the critters living in the Stream um you know it's kind of a challenging environment to live in an area where there's not free flowing abundant water right all the time so I know we're talking about flooding and there's a lot of flooding when it does ring but when it doesn't you know you've got these other things going on um and that's the photo on the lower right is a dwarf wedge muscle right those are federally listed endangered species um apparently live in mil River um there's 12 species that have been identified in the M River um so those are you know potentially you know kind of being implicated by any pollutants that we have coming out bloody Brook um and so that's something we need to beware of there's also a lot of incompatible infrastructure and what I mean by that in this specific case is undersized Crossings so Bridges and CTS um if they're not big enough to adequately you know convey the flow of water and sediment through that road crossing um it causes some issues some of those issues are flooding during High flows if there's an undersized Crossing as you can see on that private driveway on the left hand side um that the space that the water has to squeeze through is much smaller than the channel itself and certainly much smaller than the flow clean so during High flows it backwaters or ponds upstream sediment will be deposited in that Backwater it's basically like a dam at high flow right and so there's a you know there's no sediment transport continuity through that Crossing so you've got sediment being deposited upstream and then Downstream it'll scour right and then after the scour it might deposit more s like excessively so so there's some implications for Bank stability um and for flooding if you live upstream and you saw those pictures earlier with the garage Upstream of an undersized Crossing you know that in really high flows you know it can Pond up and and back up into your garage or or that one house where you saw the uh the sandbags by the back door right those are upstream and under undersized Crossings um some of these undersized crossings that we've mapped are private driveways and there's quite a few um on Bloody Brook but also on chlo Brook but some of them are municipal like town roads and the one I'm showing you here is the street that's an upstream view um of fa Street on Cho Brook and you can see a fairly small undiz box c um but you also see that the sewer line is crossing uh the stream as well so that's a further constricting flow it's taking up the space that the water should be taking up you know I in an ideal situation uh your Crossing is big enough to not only convey the flow in the channel but also if during a flood you need somewhere for the water to that's on the flood plane to be conveyed right so um if you think about how wide the stream is during flood and you look at these there's certainly not um they're certainly not compatible we can talk a lot about that another example of an incompatible structure that kind of stood out um in the reconnaissance was here at Pleasant Street uh close to where we are right now um that photo on the upper left is looking Upstream last March during a rainstorm uh you can see a wide scour pool um in the foreground of the photo Downstream of the crossing you also see a kind of quick water little riffle just Downstream of the crossing after the water comes out of the cul and that uh riffle was actually on top of an armored bed there's some uh you know angular rip wrap that's dumped there um if you look at the bottom of the slide that is a uh surveyed transect you know profile moving down the deepest part of the stream channnel and you'll notice that at the downstream end the bed elevation is actually higher than at the Upstream end so I'm not exactly sure um why that is if it's just a real like a massive amount of rip wrapp was dumped in there um and that's you know elevating the bed surface um but whatever the case that elevated bed surface is uh causing backw watering upstream and if you see the photo on the right you'll see that the uh inside the the Culver itself it's actually clogged with a lot of debris and you know Woody material um that is you know I talked to a land owner there and uh it's kind of a perennial problem I think partly because the uh the bed elevation on this cobber is you know it's has to flow Upstream basically so it's kind of ponding itself up uh you can see the Deep scour pool Downstream that's uh adjacent to the autoart store um so when they dumped in this rip wrap whenever that was um you know maybe that was done in in an attempt to stabilize the bed which was eroding and it's deep pool that formed or there's also quite a bit of erosion along the channel Banks there so um it might have been done more recently you know quite quite a long time after the crossing itself was put in but this is the kind of thing we're looking at and these are the you know looking at these different you know Crossings and bridges and whatnot and trying to figure out which ones are the real problem that's kind of what we're going to rely on the hydraulic model um you know to help us determine but you know you can get a lot of Clues just from seeing what you see out in the field another uh maintenance issue that kind of came up through the the reconnaissance was the uh was kind of a a trend in landscaping I'd say right so a lot of the homes along bloody Brook and shf Brook um I've hired private landscaping companies and those companies are using leaf blowers to blow the leaves and you know debris in the fall especially probably off the lane off their lawn and you can see in the two top photos there there's like not even a single leaf on on the graphs um but if where I was standing to take those photos I'm standing in about 2 and 1/2 ft of leaves um it's almost like you know wind blown dudes of leaves right that are coming into that stream um and on the lower left that photo is showing you what the actual water in the Stream looks like um with a thick mat of leaves and that turbid um turbid water with all the organic material um so we're just kind of filling up the stream with leaves um so that's you know something that could be a you know recommended you know change in maintenance strategy to you know kind of seems like it might be a lwh hanging fruit um the photo on the lower right you'll see is a smaller C on sugar Loa Brook and in uh s uh instances we actually found CS that were almost completely clogged with leaves um there's almost no no room at all you almost can't tell what that is in that so we talked a little bit about modern floods but flooding isn't just a modern problem right we've had historic flood uh in Deerfield and I just wanted to share a couple photos I found um these are both from the 1938 hurricane um on the top photo it looks to me to be a private driveway I think on Bloody Brook um and you can see water coming over the driveway and over the over the lawn and flood plane um and then the bottom photo is on Chalo Street that's the old fire station with water um over shff Street so there was a 38 hurricane probably a lot of people F of but there was also the 36 hurricane and this is a photo showing um the bridge or what's left of it looking at Sunderland um when the bridge washed away in 1936 leaving only the ab and the peers so there have always been big floods right but unfortunately with climate change they're predicting more frequent flooding right so um the image I'm showing you is the Noah Atlas 14 so Noah um you know everyone knows who Noah is I think um they publish uh predicted rainfall totals um this one is a 24-hour how much rain you get in 24 hours um over a 10-year recurrence interval so every 10 years you would get about five Ines of rain according to this Noah 14 hours um but the point of why I wanted to show you this is just to talk about climate change a little bit and that you know everyone you know in the scientific Community is predicting that the frequency of these flooding events will be become more more frequent you know rainfalls become become more intense uh the duration of that rainfall is longer the spatial extent of that rainfall is larger right so Noah actually every several years has to redo these um predictive you know uh equations right so they're actually working on the the um Atlas 15 now which will be ready in 2026 and so the take home point is that you know flooding is bad and we all remember Irene we remember you know floods that happened you know a couple years ago but there they're not going to stop unfortunately so we got to be you got to figure out how to be resilient right so what do we do what are some of our strategies to kind of combat what we have coming down the pipe at us um and uh you know some of these are pretty basic again I apologize that the text came out so small in these slides but um one strategy is just watershed management and planning and that's what this grant is and it's a it's a planning Grant funded by the state with MVP um and fur Cog is a really good organization that can do that does a lot of these planning grants um we can also do you know use proactive land use like zoning bylaw so thinking about where are the areas that are most you know uh most uh you know threatened at the highest risk of having some of these flood impacts right and and try to figure out how to we take are most important infrastructure out of those areas right so using conservation tools and kind of a proactive land use approach can be a really good way for communities to deal with this sort of thing and improve their climate resiliency um and you know forestry and agricultural best management practices especially in a watershed like bloody Brook which is 34% agricultural um you know nrcs and the Farm Service Agency um can have a lot of tool tools for farmers and Forest stewards um to try to you know reduce runoff and and that sort of thing um improving and modernizing infrastructure we talked a little bit about um crossings that need to be upgraded but there's also you know Green infrastructure and storm water management um there's a lot of large you know Industrial and Commercial um development within the town uh of Deerfield and within the shed and you know any Improvement to run off and and dealing with the water that comes off those Parcels could have a real impact and you real benefit um so that kind of thing and then you know also uh River in uh flood plane restoration and there's a lot of great organizations that work here locally including the Connecticut River Conservancy um and the ottomon that get a lot of money uh to do habitat and flood resiliency climate resiliency work so um these are all kind of things that are going to try to come out of this is like recommending where some paths forward right for the town to deal with this and improve this resiliency deal with this mitigation of flooding uh and now there's a few slides that Rosy is going to talk about with the hydrologic and hydraulic modeling and we'll talk about next steps and have time for questions thank you um so I'm going to say a few words about the hydrologic and hydraulic modeling um this is kind of where we take the data that was collected in the field so in addition to the observations that Nick shared we had um a staff engineer actually measuring those culbert Crossings um so that we can model those and predict um what would happen at those locations during different levels of flooding um um and we're at the early stages of setting up these models right now but we will be doing another U meeting in a couple months we haven't scheduled it yet but we'll be talking more about the results of the modeling at that time um I just wanted to explain you know you might hear this a lot the H we call it H&H you know H&H modeling so the hydrologic portion the first part is looking at you know what is the land area that will contribute runoff to the stream when it rains so we map that land area which you can see um on the left and um then we use factors so I've outlined up top um is the bloody Brook Watershed so this is showing both of the two watersheds next to each other um we look at factors such as what is the land cover um as Nick was explaining you know you have the forested areas the um agricultural areas or impervious areas so we factor that in because that will impact how how quickly the rainfall ends up in the brook um we look at soil types as well so those factors go into making a prediction of the flow that will end up in the brook um when it rains and we look at different um levels of rainfall and so the result here so the these graphs are showing the peak flows in bloody Brook um from the hydrologic model and the the tall one there is I believe that's the 100-year flood um and then we did the same thing for Sugarloaf Brook so that's the bottom portion there and um again we look at the what the peak flow in the brook is um for those different levels of flooding um and you know when Nick was explaining the uh Noah Atlas 14 data um so when we refer to the 100e flood um it's kind of like a an easy way to to to convey that term that the the chance of this storm happening is has a 1% chance which means that um on average it might only happen every 100 years but the reality is is just because you have a 100-year flood doesn't mean it's going to take another 100 years before you have that flood um but it's a way of evaluating the level um of that flooding and what the risk of flooding of that event is um and then the hydraulic model um is a it's a separate software program um and that's where we take the flows that we predicted from the first part of the modeling and we um input it into um like a geometric model of the brook itself so the graphic on the right um those different colors are showing the terrain um so you know where where you have higher elevations and lower elevations um and then the filled-in blue areas the the area of the brook so it shows like where the water you know how how deep does the water get um and then so you know we've we've we're at the stage where we've constructed these models but we have to verify them and actually then use them to make some predictions um so I have one more slide here and these Graphics are not from bloody brook or Sugarloaf Brook but I wanted to show examples of what we will do with the model um so as I've been mentioning we can identify what the different flow rates will be and how those different flow rates actually behave um in the brook um so we can um understand you know how how deep does the water get at different locations um and also how fast does it go um so when you have those constrictions um um you know the water slows down on one side of the covert but as it's getting through if you've ever stood below a structure like that during a big storm event you would see that you know that water is really rushing through there so that those High velocities um can cause that that scour that Nick was explaining um and then so we're nearing the end here we talk about the next steps in this project um over the next couple months um we you know Nick said that they were out there in November they gathered as much data as they could but there may be a few things that they want to look at some more in the spring you know when the weather improves um we're going to be completing the H&H modeling um and then we'll be using the results of that modeling to look at potential uh flood mitigation projects so you know if we can see from the model and also based on on our observations which of those cul constrictions might um have a greater impact if we were to improve those and use that to help us prioritize um or at least rank you know the the urgency um uh and then we'll be you know updating um another Community Forum with those results um and ultimately uh this project does include um developing two two projects into conceptual designs um and then Gathering that information so that uh the town can pursue grant funding for the next phase some more photos of the Watershed and we have time for questions I have a question um it was really eye opening to learn about the constriction causing the backup and when you're doing that modeling looking ahead um wouldn't there be an impact you when you choose one to fix you're going to have a complete impact upstream and down scream and then you have to remodel again so how do you make how do you figure out where to start yeah um to the mic I have people come to the mic oh okay um yeah so the question was if you are using the model and looking at one constriction and how things would change if you were to change that condition um well I think it's it's it is an iterative process um because we could decide to say like look at what happens if you update all of the CTS but that's probably not going to happen in that order um so I think we'd have to see you know make some predictions based on the existing conditions results and and try to um prioritize what we might look at um but the advantage of having the model is that you can check to see make sure you're not having any adverse impacts by making a change at one particular location so yeah so you can you can model propose conditions right for that one crossing right and then and then rerun the model so you know on the ground one example that several folks um you know have pointed out to me when I've been out in the field is a ker drive right so a new CT went in there um a much larger covert that should have been more you know um in keeping with the like necessary morphology of the stream right but the problem is maybe that the one Downstream just like 60 ft Downstream there's another Crossing that wasn't um updated right so in a model scenario you could see okay you up upgraded Kell it or dry it but does that do anything if you don't touch the one at North Main Street you know maybe not right so that's the kind of thing you can look at um can you come to the microphone we had a request um can you ask a question thank you sounds like you're looking at the water in nearfield what happens when this water Ely it gets under Great Swamp gowhere right no that's a great question um so the model I think is going to as far as i91 yeah I think so so you have to you have to set like the the extent of the model so the from the upstream and of where the waterers hitting the land and coming into the stream until you get to 91 is what we were specifically looking at um yeah I know bloody Brook goes down into the Great Swamp on in mil River um Sugarloaf Brook goes down into the lower area across the the agricultural Fields along the Connecticut um and enters the Connecticut there um and we did uh you know continue the mapping through that you know weightly portion for the sugar Brook um maybe we could do the pl 566 slides Greg could you get those slides for me um I've I've been concerned about flooding downtown here since my first experience in 2005 so we've been lucky to get the M we were the First Community in the state to be MVP certified and so we've replaced coverts one at a time through the MVP program and as Nick just mentioned you replaced Keller her drive but you didn't have another half a million dollars to replace the one Downstream so I've been trying to figure this out for years I have been going to meetings in New Hampshire on a regular basis to Portsmouth New Hampshire where they were compelled by EPA to redo their whole downtown with per uh pervious pavement and underground storage um storm water uh uh filters and holding tanks and I was so impressed and then another meeting I went to just a couple years ago actually um down in Cambridge where camridge has taken 20 2 million gallon tanks and buried them as holding tanks for the excess storm water but of course you know this is significant significant money so so um I was at a meeting this summer in August uh in Boston and I found out about PL 566 and what I I was just so wicked excited because this I think will fit us it's not been used in Massachusetts one except for one other uh instance out on the cape where they're doing saltwater restoration where they grab the storm water uh before for it and filtrate it and hold it uh before it's dumped on the oyster and shellfish farming um this is a program through nrcs nrcs is wonderful to work with we've worked uh several projects over the years through the emergency Watershed protection plan um program that I've worked with we've had several one you know close to a million dollar projects here in town um when we've had storm damage but I have not used this one before and um the more I investigated it the more I'm excited it has to be a watershed of under 250,000 Acres which bloody Brook and Sugarloaf are it has to have at least 20% agriculture which this is about as we've stated about 34% have we have to have a designation as rural we are rural we have a USDA loan already we've already been certified as rural um for our sewer treatment plan so we check off all the boxes extremely excited um the and and probably this is just ballparking but when talking to Nick earlier a few days ago all the projects done together are probably not more than $10 million well that's a pretty small fled prevention uh part uh program application project for this program these programs are used used to doing you know major major things you know tens of millions of dollars so this is really darly could be fitting so this is getting exciting the problem is this is a very prescripted program in other words there's phases it's a three to five year phased program but we got this MVP Grant to do this hydrology study it started as the um Conservation District had hired because we had flooding and it was just you have to figure out where the water's going and how it's changed and it's changed over the years as places get developed water the course of the water has changed so we are trying to get money to do the study down here and the study on River Road because the water in my experience has changed over the years so we've got we got this grant um to have Nick look at this and the conservation once Nick came down in the spring and said you know this is a really big project so um we applied for the MVP program and we got this $176,000 grant to do this study right now that Nick and rosley are talking about that is the phase one the pier phase of uh 566 talking to the engineer St engineer uh Darren Davis who we have a great relationship with um he is willing you know considering if we apply for the program to consider this he has in-house capacity and work with both Nick and Ro Rosalie to figure out how we're going to um you know are we at risk at flooding which is no question that we are um do we have Solutions and by you have to have certain Hoops you got to jump through but Nick and Rosy can certainly come up with solutions to this and then hopefully we can do this all together because this is a problem of you know doing at peace meal yes we can work with the aabon we can do this little piece we can do this little piece and we still might have to do that but the idea would be to it's 100% paid for in the first phase piffer which is your plinary um investigation finding report part which is what we're doing right now um the the next is your planning uh phase and then your design phase and your permitting phase 100% paid for it's 75 to 90% And I would say we're probably a 75% Community but if we get 75% of our town Solutions in and uh could get MVP to pick up the match then I think this could be close to 100% paid for but the attractiveness is of this is that nrcs in this program can work with the private stakeholders as well like bloody Brook Farm that CL that Crossing in on Bloody Brook Farm is going to be very expensive to replace but they would work with uh the owners of bloody farm and that they could replace that 100% right up to implementation and maybe nrcs could come up with a a 90% match for for that for them as Farmers um they could work with the senior housing developer to put in pervious um pavement parking lot with a holding area just like we did at the lery lot uh hopefully we could do it when we do the expansion on the 1888 building the parking lot would be pervious pavement and holding tanks just like they do in Cambridge there are certain things that we could do that whole piffer part is community involvement and engagement yes the Conservation District we can come in and do an educational Outreach with the landscapers to see you know to te Teach them that how important it is not to blow leaves into the broke and maybe we can get that clean Brook cleaned out as a result um but there there are other things that CommunityWide if we do it in a very all at once like the parking lot at P at uh at Frontier is going to be replaced we can do something there we can do something at Dees because that parking lot is getting old too so we as a town don't have flood insurance and most homeowners along bloody Brook and and the sugar B Watershed their biggest asset is their home but insurance is getting more expensive homeowners insurance doesn't cover flooding and um and if you don't Can't Buy insurance you can't get a mortgage so it really is impactful for people uh along the area so if we all work together in this process and that's why it's so wonderful because Nick and loosle both are wonderful to work with and Darren if he's willing to work with them as and knows them already and has a relationship with them already I think this can we can pull this together and we can do it in the timeline with our projects and our what we're doing we have always intended to rip up some of the pavement along North Main Street so what do we put in there can do we put a rain Garden do we put a a rectangular long filter uh holding tank in there I mean what can we do you know uh in through the whole town and build on what we did in the L lot which was paid for through MVP and federal grants so I I believe that we can do this and I I feel it's really critical as a community that we do this because everybody has a stake in it um this flooding I know I've had three 100 Year events in my 21 years is a select board member so to say that you're not going to have 100-year events on a regular basis what they're going to do is just recalculate and and retell you that the 100e storm is now a 50-year storm or 20e storm and you know we're going to have this water there's just no question and it's been really stressful to me to figure out how we can do this work without costing the town you know hundred hundreds of thousands of dollars for these culverts that you know and an undersized Crossings so I think it can be done we you know have a select board that is willing to move with us and and I think it's possible so I'd be glad to is there a couple more questions I mean there's Greg maybe can yeah these are the stages of the program um and then next slide is and show some inflation is it is the question Bob I'm sorry I didn't see you hi I'm Diane Martin I'm Diane Martin and actually Liv on road my whole life and you were talking that you stopped at Route 91 correct um that's a half study the whole Brook runs all the way to triny's Pond and you're talking about if one Bridge cul is fixed and it may affect the next one well you may fix everything through town and do all these different perious different different kind of surfaces um or impervious into perious sorry uh different things but when you get to the other side of 91 is cow field with a little bit of swamp the service road was put in the new culs were put in for the service road since the cows are no longer there the area has been filled with beaver dams there is now a giant tree that is from the service road you can see it it's been there since the summertime and the brook is not flowing because there's a tree across it and I've been watching it go higher and higher the the water is very very high so doing a study of the brook to stop at 91 is not really doing a study of the brook we should actually go all the way through because what goes here goes down to there Dian if we get part of the pl 566 we would go all the way down you need you need to address and the reason why is because the permitting which is so grossly expensive the NEPA process and army Corp engineer process all of that would be paid for under the nrcs Grant and so you could we could afford to extend it down I don't know if you realize it but the Great Swamp used to be all ditches and the last time I hunted it was probably 45 or 50 years ago and you could only walk through there if it was frozen all right but you need to go in and and get somebody to pay for the money to clean those ditches so that the thing will drain because it did drain years ago you go through there you'll see it all when you come to town There's a coverboard that goes from the old fire station next to picture's garage part of blacksmith Brook you're going to have to replace that and that probably goes back to the early 1900s okay now one of the problems you is the town of Deerfield and it's Infinite Wisdom back when 91 was built and they removed the fil that they pre-loaded the bridges they brought it and put it on what was known as a DWI lot where the elementary school is now they buildt this big swamp that was out here it was a huge swamp asking any of the people that went to school in the ' 50s it was a huge swamp out here you filled out that land all right and you got all these other culs that just need to get fixed and people throw stuff in throw it in a dish throw it in a dish uh we had the same problem on the farm years ago we cleaned it all up but everybody throws it back in and you need but I don't think you're going to solve the problem until you go through the Great Swamp down there whatever you want to call it the weight in woods and get that so it can gra properly to the Connecticut River got to get all the junk out of there and there's a lot of junk I think maybe the state owns some of that property I'm not sure it it's going to be complicated in the sense that the you know the state that covert I think by Fisher's garage is stay know right we have that street have we no I we C you not to take it but I but they put more black top down and I thought somebody made a deal to take it no we don't want to take it because no Bob we did we did we did not take it because of the infrastructure issues when I was a kid we used to CL go through it I I think the whole point of going through PL 566 why I'm excited about this is that we can pull in the state and hopefully we can get I'm I'm not sure of who we can get to pay for that part of their Culvert because I'm not but the good thing is nrcs um has history working with state I'm not sure if this would be eligible but you better believe that I would work very very hard to make sure that the state would be on board with this and somehow somebody paid for it when it freezes if it does freeze in the next couple weeks somebody ought to walk through there and take some pictures because years ago it was Channel well I know I know it's falling I know it's falling apart and it's clean out it's not taken care of I know it's terrible that's part of the problem with most of the ditches have done all right Nick one question I have for you while is you've done some field work already and one of the key questions we're going to need to answer is which culverts are the most important ones to replace first you showed in your slides uh Pleasant Street their street and private drives is that kind of your assessment you know initially of of what looks like the problem area I mean I'm I'm really interested to see what the the hydraulic model shows um you know one issue which you know is pretty apparent when you walk around town is there's not a lot of slope right there's not a lot of gradient through town so um what that means to me is that one Crossing you know can influence several other Crossings Upstream right because the the elevation difference between them is not is not great so um yeah I mean those stood out as you know kind of obvious ones but you know we see what the what the model shows I'm Peter James I live on Captain Lether drive I'm a newcomer in town I've only been on Captain Le drive for 43 years and I'm up against M um I had to did a stint on the Conservation Commission for the town back when a lot of the building projects occurred uh so I've kind of kept an eye on this now my observation is that your initial work is the most critical uh I'm I'm not sure that you that you're calculating enough water flow and that that is the basis for your project and I'm saying that because of my observations on a daily basis watching watching bloody B and watching how the water is coming off the mountains and I'm talking about north shalou south shalou and I'm talking about the ridge uh once you get on the other side of of Hillside Road my observation is that we have a lot more water coming off the mountains the vegetation on the mountains is changing Remar remarkably in the old days people and if you look at the deeds in the 1800s and in the early 1900s they all called it Sprout land well that Sprout land was absorbing water to a great extent and if you look at these same areas today all of that Spa Sprout land is falling down and there's nothing to replace it and we we're seeing it on a regular basis and what I'm concerned about is that your model gets tough enough in terms of how the water flow is going you know you can play with the Cals but the question is is how much water is really going to go through those and back in the early days uh the the state got enter Retention Ponds and detention ponds most of which didn't work so I I don't know where where you hold the water back uh before you re orchestrate the cits together get it down and so I uh you know I just offer that as a possibility and if you a want to chat with me I'm pretty easy to find I agree with you Peter 100% a lot more water than there ever used to be and it is directionally different coming down over the years so some of that could be like a forest management thing like the age of the forest that goes because there's so much of it and you can go into you know we have a pond on top of North shle to very few people know about that pond feeds into the book that ultimately is part of this infrastructure down here and again it's seasonal you may have four feet of water in that pond uh at a certain period of time and then you may have a foot and a half in another period of time but that's real water and it comes down and ultimately gets into the the tributaries if you go into um go upstage Road in you get claps Pond and all of that water starts to feed toward River Road and when they're putting in for Comfort Drive that was a strug and one of the reasons that you know there was a lot of water at the end of pter drive but it is part of the mountain Watership you see the same issues on the other side of the town when when you're talking about the Western Bridge although that's not impacting on the on the Southfield uh difficulty but there's a whole lot of water and you've got you've got rout five and you've got Route 91 that are basically and the railroad that are all D it's not free flow ultimately and Diane is absolutely correct once it gets down into that area and heads into the the Great Swamp uh it's quite an interesting series of events so it's again it's how much water you have to manage and and in which ways you going to be able to provide the methodology so that's just my concern is the beginning is important yeah now those are good comments I think uh yeah it's it's not going to be easy we'll do best and and um I do have cards here um and uh we'll be happy to talk to anyone after and love to hear from more um you know residents about your observations because that helps us know if we're on the right track right hi so the other observation um in a similar vein is on Jackson Road I've lived there for 33 maybe years across the street and it used to be an open swamp and now it's all filled in so do we create any other kind of just preserve the area so we have more absorption rather than just sending it all down the street that's observation yeah I think there probably is some opportunity for wetland restoration and Wetland you know connection connecting to Wetlands um that may have been historically um more useful you know in water management yeah I'm Jason Clark I live at 81 North Main Street um I just wanted to go back earlier into your presentation you talked about different zoning changes that could be applied and stuff have you had any experience in Massachusetts towns where that's actually happened uh yeah uh there uh there's something um like zoning overlay districts um a little bit different um in uh Conway they're doing this um for uh we've mapped a river Corridor and the a river Corridor is basically like uh the active channel in any of the areas around the channel that um you know uh interact with the stream right so it's like the part part of the flood plane any bars uh adjacent connected wetlands and so you have an envelope that you map that River Corridor and say this is the area that the the river uh would naturally you know use and move across the landscape to kind of find an equilibrium with its uh siment and water load um you know that's a lot of information and it's could be kind of technical but so in mapping that sort of river Corridor well I mean generally speaking I mean you would be looking out I mean when you're talking about a brook I mean you're probably looking at several hundred yards away from it at least I mean it's going to spread out quite a bit um so that kind of leads me to the next point it's I mean there's been you know there hasn't been a lot of buildup in this area area you know as far as residentials and everything like that but most of the buildup is coming from within the town itself l so it seems to me with all this open space that the town now owns the the change of behavior can actually start with the town itself and that would be the easiest way and then we go from there it's like we're taking State money to build up build up build up but now we're also taking State money to mitigate flood damage so I just wanted to point those two facts out right okay thank you um Rosal can I ask a question before you take this your hypological model is it a dynamic model so you can say if water flow is X this would be this would happen if it's 2x this would happen if it's 3x this would happened so um yeah we would the model will look at um I would say maybe six or so different um flow levels and we determine those you know we talk about the 100-year event but we can also look at smaller flood events that are um defined as like the 10 year 25 year 50e generally speaking um it's the the biggest storm that um is typically evaluated might be the 500 year you know FEMA when they do their flood mapping sometimes they look at a 500e event um and then anything bigger than that is typically not analyzed unless you're talking about um something such as you know what could happen if a dam broke you know you really wanted to know in a catastrophic scenario the level of flooding um so yeah we will look at different levels yeah hello uh Mark Malone from South Mill River Road I have property in your field both affected by the bloody Brook and uh sugar load Brook and um I just wanted to say uh Carolyn had brought up about the swailes and the problem with the drainage at town meeting well over 5 years ago and I have seen not one thing get done on the positive I've only seen the situation get worse um uh your name Sir Nick Nick so uh Nick I was surprised to see on the pictures that you showed there you didn't show pictures of the Swale that's going or Brook going by the elementary school which has gotten worse Carolyn brought this up years ago there's problems with en sephtis and other mosquito born diseases and if we can't get the swes SC 566 great idea I think it's a great idea does anybody have a timeline when you estimate the state would would fund that 5 years 10 years no this is federal uh oh Federal yes it's Federal so zero never look for a program that will work no I mean reality is no no this is this is It's a prescribed program it's five it's three to five years um I think we can speed it up we're already well into the first year um by moving forward with the MVP program so I feel if we stay on top of this that this is is doable within three year at the most and and and I did ver I met with nrcs yesterday afternoon there was a lot of confusion about what was happening but this most of this money is funded under the farm bill the farm bill uh I've worked on multiple Farm bills over the years they're fiveyear bills the last Farm Bill expired on 2023 in September of 2023 uh it was extended and it was just extended another year is it uh it is a mess but as far as I know we're still working on it and we have funding for this first part of this anyway so um if we get accepted into the program uh which is what we're going to do right now is recommend to the select board vote and recommend to the select board to participate and um then we'll start the process and like I said um I feel like our relationship with the state engineer already is is so good that um he will decide that he has in-house capacity with the current um uh people that we have working on the MVP Grant here and we're moving this along the and the idea is to identify this I I started as you know a mosquito District over 10 years ago because of the issues with the water standing water in town and we do treat the um you know standing water if there's if necessary if we see a lot of activity so I mean we we have been working on this the problem is we needed to find a program that would pay for this all at once and work with private stakeholders as well as the town and as well as the state and the idea is that if we do this in a all together in a big picture we're going to have more success I think that if we were funded in 3 years would be optimistic that work to get done would be another five years to be optimistic this amount of work it will take a long time and I is the is the position of the Town 566 and that's it or are there other um options of what to do about just cleaning the swes because the drainage mark what we did um about 3 years ago is um and we're only the third in the whole state I convinced um Kevin Scarboro to apply for um a bundled noi and um the Conservation Commission uh re reviewed it and um accepted it and we will update it as we go and we'll have as we get more information and it does allow under this bundle noi and I should probably let P talk about it but it is um allows us to do some ditch maintenance the biggest problem with the ditches is the state the ditch that's under the sale and Culver that goes behind Red Roof in and under 91 back down into weightly there was a guy there from weightly saying where's the water coming from it there are trees in there 2 to 3 ft in diameter that have fallen across the state's not doing anything about it they're not going to do anything about it I'm just wondering if if we're going for the 566 that's a great idea because for the overall plan you have to have everything engineered and what are you going to do but on the um State EPA and cleaning the swes out it's not that expensive it would make the biggest amount of difference and the problem in the town was people aren't even nobody's brought up is the high groundw there's nowhere for the water to go you're talking about coverage and pavement and build up that's not the problem the problem is that water is not leaving the town so you could have it totally open and the SWS are closed and the culs are closed it won't matter and the water is high everywhere down really I was just going to say one of the things that people are so distressed about which and again is having their sub pumps run all the time and it's terrible so hopefully when we have a big giant plan which Nick and Rosalie will work on for us with the state engineer we can pressure the state to do this particular thing for maintenance you can't you can't do it unless you have somebody coming and saying this is a problem who else who is in charge of it from the town whole water or some somebody that's making any action happen is that you or well I I've been doing it but I mean the MVP is basically we have a representative from the Conservation Commission um I'm a select woman for Carol has just uh been involved in the nrcs and she's working with a lot of federal agencies that are involved in water flow and um you know managing disaster events um and we have uh Henry Melnick who's a farmer um he's also a member of the board so we're working with the town Administration and the select board to try and coordinate these things um but as as everyone knows sorry is this on the select board then it's not on the select board it's on everybody who's trying to figure out get Federal money or state money to do things I mean we all agree that there's flooding problem right we all agree that we don't have the money to fix it ourself and we also agree that we have to integrate this with other towns like weightly so if we get into the pl 566 which is on our agenda tonight we're going to take up um asking the select board to express a letter of support for examining whether we can qualify for this program um that's a first step in trying to identify Federal money to do whatever plan we come up with um is the problem only because I'm finding I think the problem lot related to environmental you can't go into the anymore there'sa regulations are now wetlands and you can't take it that debris out and so the water's not this is a serious serious problem and it's not just a problem that's an engineering problem it's an environmental problem and I I don't know the EPA from the state or the um B that's where the problem started with they put 91 in then they put the swes in and then they don't maintain them and go well Mark what what we're what is so good is 100% of the pl 566 is going to pay for this plan and they will identify those areas and we can pressure then we can pressure people to take care of them and and they can run the permitting because it is design design is planning design and also the permitting which is so wicked expensive that that's really the expensive part of all these things you've identified what it is you have to have uh somebody professional so you can get in there and clean it out so that's recomend a team with the team leader to try to take care of this because if I say it's not your resp right this is well I'm volunteering because I've been stressed out for years about this somebody needs to deal with it and there isn't anybody if I said now who would I go to to talk to about it I have a serious problem with water on my property who do I go to talk about it nobody knows anything you would actually talk to the Town Administrator and the Town Administrator would bring it to the select board and um we would try to address it with the tools we have available at the moment we don't have any money to do this thing but it's not about money I've offered to pay for the whole thing it's about somebody being able to get it done whole thing are you talking about you want the cleaning the the the cult over at Red Roof in I can't believe you guys didn't take pictures of that it is a mess over there there's a whole Pond behind the an CLE that never used to be there and it's going to go into town and the the same thing I said I was surprised that nobody took pictures of over by the by the elementary school like isn't that a health hazard having all that standing water and nobody cleans the ditches and you you did say about the leaf blowing which is a big part of it but it's the branches it's everything and leaf blowing to make a Town ordinance to say leaves get removed from the property which I always do for my property anyways otherwise they blow back in that's not that difficult to do maybe we could start there we got to do something I mean just talking about it and waiting for the state and feds to bail us out mark thank you for your comments but we' got a line backing up here so next next speaker Nick and Rosy can I just three quick questions there should be yes and no answers but uh in the modeling um would there be uh capacity calculations for the flood water storage on the Northern Ender bloody Brook above Jackson Road and up into North Hill Side is that part of the modeling the capacity there and what um potential Land Management could be done yes okay uh thank you uh would there be any recommendations it's been brought up a lot on regular and sustained maintenance culbert SES and so forth would you have recommendations there or do that Fallen something else to do um yeah I think you know where there's uh where it makes sense there would be you know that could be discussed as part of the outcome yeah that would be helpful then given that 100e floods happen every couple weeks now um will engineering designs have a certain percentage of increased assessment for on for going forward like not base it on what FEMA has now is a 100-year flood because I don't quite believe them um you know yeah yeah so the MVP program encourages that so we can look at you know climate change factors in the flow calculations we can put as part of the pl 566 is that we want a maintenance plan out of it that can be our requirement that would be helpful Jim C isfield Road um you mentioned percentages of funding but even if we assume that the the federal money Fair brings us everything that we ask for how much is the town likely to have to outlay what what's our share likely to be I understand you don't have exact numbers but if you can give us rough ballpark figured numbers of zeros would be useful well p i I said can you give me a ballpark of what some of the stuff is and I know that you cannot replace a Culver for less than a half a million now so we just ballparked it at 10 million okay most of your planning and designing and permitting is a larger and larger proportion of that so that's probably 100% paid for and that's probably 5 to six million of the 10 okay I feel that you need to be conservative so we would be on the hook for 7 for for 25% the N nrcs would pay for 75 to 90% I if you say 75% so that's 2 and A5 million that we would have to be paid for but I feel that we MVP has already committed 176,000 to this process and nrcs knows that they don't have to pay for that they're going to try to integrate it into the piffer or the original start so maybe they'll give us a higher percentage and maybe the MVP program count on it what maybe the then well no they have been always very generous with us and and we have never actually paid the 25% on our ewp projects we were able always to get um pay less but I'm trying to be conservative so I think MVP would certainly be on would be we could get another few hundred th000 or even a million from MVP on this because they would want to follow through we could be a good pilot this is this program would be we would be a model for the rest of the state because the state isn't utilizing this program so we're looking at call it two million for the town potentially so I do have one followup how much should we vote for the emergency flood mitigation after the uh the July floods a couple years ago that was we ended up paying about 600,000 but if I remember we voted something like a million and a half well that that was because we had to get reimbursed comparable to a onetime emergency situation but potentially a longterm benefit but yeah the logic of it is great toss you a shi question the the the dangerous thing to do is to to use ballpark figures that aren't based in fact so the first thing we have to do is come up with what is a logical plan to address the problem we have and then find out how much does it cost to pay for that logical plan to address the problem we have and then we can start identifying funding sources and whether we can afford it at at you know as as long as we can get this initial stages done without you know going to the taxpayers and asking them to pay for it it's the right thing to do even if we then find that we're in the position we are in now when we don't have the funds to do anything so um at least if we have a plan 3 years from now somebody comes up with some money for us there's a plan already in place and we can go out and try to do these things even if we have to do it every two years we do part of the plan um but you know my commitment is to always go out and try to find state and federal money to do these projects because the state and federal governments used to do these projects but they've consistently uh lowered the taxes on billionaires and so we don't have this when we built the sewers in the 1970s 90% of it was paid by federal dollars now we're paying for it all ourselves and this is a problem of transferring it all to the local communities and letting them worry about it hey Christian from K her drive um uh thank you guys for putting this together I can tell you've done a lot of work it's very clearly a hot button issue around here um but um so you must have a lot of information about the elevations and all the cers and stuff and I'm just wondering I think I'd be a much more effective participant in the conversation and it does affect us over on kellerer um if I had access to some of that information you have drawing showing the elevations and the Cs and and all of that that the residents can have access to uh not now uh but yeah we do have we're getting all that information together um we've done all the survey of measuring all the CTS and then we've got the lar the digital Topography of the Watershed and that's like the main base that everything um you know how you draw that Terrain in the model um so it's all still very much in you know development at this point it's all you know anything that we produce as part of this project is public information so when we pull together all of the the deliverables we can share that as well great thank yeah and this meeting was very much like a you know kickoff not really necessarily a kickoff meeting we got started at the end of November so it's a quick turnaround uh so we haven't crunched all the the numbers yet um we will be having another meeting later in the spring that has yet to be scheduled I don't know if that'll be in May or whenever but um we'll have a lot more you know actual information to to share at that point um something you know there's gentleman who was up here um talking and I think he's right saying that like even if you had all the you know unlimited resources that's not automatically going to fix the problem right um but we'll never fix the problem if we don't start and part of what I was hoping to for people to take away from is you know the natural setting of where this the town of South ffield is and how you know know having been a former Wetland and then you have all this development and as people pointed out you know i91 and the railroad are basically dams at you know at really really high flow events so you know there's a lot of technical um you know tools we're going to have to pull out and pull together to try to like you know make this situation better um money is going to help but we got to really be creative and kind of be patient because everything does take time I'm Charlene ginsky I currently am serving on a storm water erosion task force in another town and we received the furog Watershed report for that particular town and I heard you reference it what was completely wonderfully valuable in that report was U furog identified the most serious areas in this is the area around Lake Oola um that were causing erosion into that Lake and as a task force what we did is say we cannot in any way shape or form handle this whole report it's too extensive and I'm sure the one for deer f is as well so what we did was identified the most serious areas and we're trying to mitigate those and we're working with the town and the highway department and I think you've heard from a lot of people here that cleaning out the ditches cleaning out the culur um I really liked hearing what Peter said because there is water coming from the mountains and and in the case of lakea for instance we're talking about retention Pond ponds being built on its ownown property so there are other ways to do it without going through another Grant and going through more money and asking to town for more money there are things we can do but we need to ENT identify those most serious places because I think it would be misleading to the town to let people feel this fog report of the Watershed study can totally be um mitigated because I I don't know how you could do it just seeing what we're working with and we're a smaller community so I I just can't imagine but I do hope you know some of the things that you've heard really really get done I mean they don't cost any money if you have the people in the town working that can do it thank you thank you very much I just would like to clarify that you do need permitting Charlene and that's what the issue is we don't have the money to pay for permitting permitting is a very expensive you have to go the Nea um and Army Corps engineer for us and everything so it is very expensive so this is why this is so important to do this as a project is that is that to clean the cul Caroline because yes to clean anything we we have the bundled noi to do some ditch digging but it is uh cleaning out of the ditches but it's very minimal and um and that was hard to do that and we had to come up with money for engineering to Pro propose that to the Conservation Commission so it's not like you can just send the highway department in to do it that's the problem I know Pete can probably talk about it a little bit more we did a lot a lot in the north end of town because under emergency permitting but I mean we don't want a disaster just so we can do it under emergency permit Pete just um not not Peter Thomas but Peter law um we have been talking with Fred becta and the Eastern Avenue Grave Street area about one Swale that we keep wanting to work on and I believe that um Pete law has been talking to Chris Miller but could you talk a little bit about where we are on that um process and whether yeah um right now I'm going back and forth to try to talk to Chris so I haven't uh followed up with him but we did look at it last fall um what coming off the Hillside and um there are you know there's issues with the swell coming down through there and with the culur or blockage so you know it's pushing the water back up and into different areas so there's a maintenance issue and there's some other things to do but Chris has a call into me we just haven't connected this week but it is something that um we as a town and a DPW should be able to do or is there a Conservation Commission issue that has to be taken up with the D um I I'm I don't know yet Tim on that because the uh Carol mentioned the bundled noi uh that was done several years ago it needs to be updated um and that was only restricted to certain areas right um I don't recall that Easter na was on the initial I so um they would have to be amended which we've discussed and we just haven't seen it yet so it would have to come to the concom and review it under the Massachusetts water protection act yeah Peter Pete Thomas um a couple of things observationally uh around where the monument play of Monument there's a spring on that mountain side and that's not the one Peter's talking about there's another spring on the mountain comes in the head of it but that that spring pumps thousands of gallons of water across the farm field and it huddles just to the east of the mon behind the houses and that is creating a higher water table than you can imagine that part of the problem and I think if you're looking at I'm used to H&H studies I worked with FEMA for 20 years I was an environmental officer so I'm familiar with what you doing if you're looking at rain solely I think you're going to mod going to underestimating the amount of water in terms of that's flowing because just if you we had standing water for a month on those La there that that spring is enough it used to supply water to all the houses on North Main Street before the water system land back around 1900 uh from bloody par down to con Street and so it's not a a weak spring and I I think it it would really beh if you haven't if you're not including the in is to think about where the water is coming from not simply in the books and it's not going to come from the top there's enough natural water seting into the environment and when it seats in you're going to have hyperstatic pressure and so if you got a pond that's here and it's not draining anywhere it's spreading that ground water out further and further and further and further you know some of it'll discharge underground into the into the Brooks but I think one of the things that you that might go out of this is we need storage capacity at the Bas of mountain because I used to sled skate of the pal the top of M there there's a lot of water up there and it doesn't show up in an active stream that's flowing into bloody Brook there's drainages that are very subt but they're there uh you can go on the farm ditches and they they've done something the other thing I was curious about is in terms of water passage the Cs or some of the bridges and stuff are the requirements to do a single structural passage in the state because one of the things I I work from Main to Alaska so I've seen different people in different parts of the country but one of the things that we used to to uh pay for as as feed was emergency overflows so that you have a let's say a 6t capacity C but you know you're going to get some heavy Stones so you elevate smaller Cs on either side wi to take care of the the emergency overall Which is far cheaper than taking out an existing C and then going you know building upu now St like Vermont and New they've gone to Bank full structures and you blow out of cob you're feeling you could be putting in a 12T bridge now so I don't think we're there in Massachusetts oh we are are we but I think that you know that looking at alternatives to single structural Replacements might be a feasible solution at least shorter to I agree with the arguments that you don't start on the Upstream end to increase capacity I've seen I've seen towns in Vermont uh where the road Foreman did just that start at the top of the hill and then we had in v and he took out five Cs down slope so you got to be very careful what you're doing and I can commiserate with people that talking about i91 and state loads and even Federal highways that was one of the biggest problems we had in main is the the Federal Highway were under capacity so we could do whatever we wanted but it wasn't going to do any good anyway enough said but I I think you really should look around the watered as other sources of water coming in and particularly seasonality um and we we get water coming off the mountain in March February like that and then ponding for 3 months you know that's a that's a large volume of water and if we get right on top of that then we've got a far bigger event so if if you haven't been doing it yeah no I'd like to to know more about where that spring is so maybe um and yeah the flood plan and the leaf CWS I think are a great option you know um and something we often uh recommend anyone else have a question comment okay well thank you all for coming uh we're as a committee we're going to make a a motion here or I'll make a motions that um we're going to start another meeting okay separate from this it's got a zoom comp oh right so if there are no more questions uh I think that we have a had a really great conversation and we'll do it again um when Nick and Rosal are closer to or have finished up the project so that we can share the findings in more detail and anybody who wants to see the finished product of course it'll be available through the town um and then uh we just keep working at it it's a sisan task so thank you everyone for coming out appreciate it thank you so very much good evening and welcome to the uh later um Municipal vulnerability preparedness MVP Core group meeting this meeting will be held in a hybrid fashion with opportunity for both inperson attendance and remote participation please note that while an option for remote attendance Andor participation is being provided as a courtesy to the public the meeting hearing will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast unless otherwise required by law members of the public with particular interest in any specific item on this agenda should make plans for in-person versus virtual attendance accordingly the meeting will be held in person in the main meeting room of the municipal Deerfield uh Deerfield municipal offices in accordance with Mass General Law chapter 38 anyone intending to record the meeting uh must identify themselves to the clerk and that will be me uh and provide their name and address for the record um afcat is recording this so um so now the there is a um a link on the website if you're happening to be watching you should already know about this um so uh first thing is to um make some recommendations to the select board so um I'm going to now switch to my email so that I can take us through this um where is it did did you send this to a different email address maybe you sent it no I I sent it to your town email oh okay because I'm not seeing you in there oh well um we have to determine that there is a risk of flooding I think okay here we are okay so um basically in order to apply for this BL 566 program we got to do a few things so the MVB Core group is going to be asked uh first to agree that there's a risk of flood flooding in the downtown um so somebody want to make a motion to say that there's a risk I think uh we have enough historical and uh current observations to verify that there is a risk of flooding uh currently and that there probably is a greater uh increase in flooding due to more frequent intense events as well as um just general climate change now I don't know that we need to do this like with a motion or something but is that a motion or no we just have to agree that there is a flooding risk consensus um agreed agreed okay agreed so 5 okay um next um there appear to be solutions that would mitigate the situation do we all agree that there are potential solutions to some of the problems associated with flooding obviously 500e flood you know 100-year flood nothing we do may make a difference but um certainly for run-of-the-mill 25e storms we could make a big difference with some of the solutions we could put in place yes I agree I agree okay I agree um is there um the next is um is there a reasonable interest in uh by town and other stakeholders to follow up on this consensus that there is a flooding risk based on tonight I think we can argue that there's plenty of interest in town address flooding plus we um have applied for and gotten uh the MVP Grant is a commitment on the town already and the state that recognizes that in fact we are at flood risk but that we also are committing to address it okay and the fourth thing is I'm going to make a motion that the Envy committee um uh recommends that the select board write a letter to Dan Wright from the state conservationist the state conservationist requesting to participate in the pl 566 program I will second that any discussion hearing none all those in favor I I I I hi okay okay um now let me go back to the other screen we've already set the next meeting date right well one quick thing about speaking to the mic please one quick thing about the next meeting I heard from Pat um that the uh all of the meeting rooms are scheduled for that time so 24th yes so we can still have the meeting we just need to do it entirely remotely which I think we will actually be fine as long as it's I think if everybody's remote then you can hear everybody pretty pretty well so and you can share documents and everybody can actually see the recording and um we have enough accountants to do that if there's already I already checked into it yes okay so we'll just move to have that be a hybrid only meeting no remote remote only oh sorry Zoom only yeah yeah and what time is that did we say yeah we did 24th it's the 24th at 5:30 p.m. okay yeah one thing did come up though which so Tim I believe there is a a a joint one thing that did come up was there is a a joint select board Finance uh meeting that that might conflict with this so well that's okay with me because somebody you know as long as they can get a quorum I okay I just I just wanted to be aware of that thanks what time is it start on the 24th 5:30 thank you okay yep all right um was there any other questions on the 566 program that anyone had Pete did you have anything I no I listen to your explanation and that's all I know I don't know if there's any other material that we could review um I had handed out that info sheet um the last meeting what what is good about this program is that there can be multiple stakeholders in other words you can work with Farmers individually homeowners individually where there are private Crossings maybe um I'm hoping I I I don't have any clarification on the state um if there was State uh like the um Culver by fiser garage I'm not sure if the replacement would be picked up under the federal program but maybe um they were not clear they didn't have a clear answer because they didn't know how impactful it was um to the overall plan if it's impactful there's a better chance and that would encourage the state to actually replace place it and so is there also an opportunity to work regionally because you know everybody keeps talking about the Great Swamp yes and and actually what I'm hoping is that we can move this along and incorporate weightly into it because um that would be the solution as as John knows you you got to move the water along and um he's brought that up multiple times um in discussions with me and we we we know we have to do something in the Great Swamp MH one thing that would be interesting to look into is if is to test the water that's coming out of this artisanal spring that's creating ponds in the back of kellerer drive and if the water is actually good can the Town South Deerfield water district do something with it you know actually that was really exciting um for me to find out that the water districts can apply as stakeholders and be part of that this process so if the solution is to use water and that they could use that as a reservoir or develop it as a reservoir and it would be paid for under the 566 which is is that exting I know that there's a the um well now the ice Fountain um in the town common is fed by some other stream I I don't know if it's that artisanal um water source or if it's another one but I've I've told I've been told that they can't shut that one off is that correct Chief no they can shut it off okay in years P okay they usually like it to cycle the water and keep circulating it is it is it part of the regular water system I was told it was but I could be incorrect okay I think you are correct John part of the regular water system of the Town water system or part of the Sugarloaf uh wed South Water Supply District okay come to there okay so is there anything any other business yes oh Chief come up to the mic um Carolyn I I was just looking through my file I can't find what the information from last time could you resend that that you said you uh gave us last time or do you have it um I can uh I might have another one let me okay thank you Chief all right Chief it's your turn hi good evening thanks for uh giving me the mic quick I just would recommend that the MVP group who has uh done some amazing work for the town vote to recommend to the select board that identify a funding stream and proceed forward with a modification of the bundled noi we should not be waiting any further at this point we're in the midst of winter right now Chris Miller's eager to get moving on cleaning out a couple different areas um the ground is frozen it minimizes the impact in the area with dump trucks with the mini escavator with everything because you have such a great Frost in the ground right now so you get an eager Highway superintendent that really wants to do some good work I would look at tyan Bond who did our last bundled notice of noi with concom and just look for a modification a renewal to include Eastern A Grave Street and the possibility of the bloody Brook and that way we do have the authority to go in there legally and actually do some maintenance work so long as we notify Pete or somebody else on the Conservation Commission I think it's a week or two in advance prior to any work it's within the noi language but there is a notification that's required um modification or Amendment would be you want to make a motion to do that Pete to to to make a recommendation to the select board to chairing the uh the that committee I would almost avoid it I would have somebody else make the motion yeah yeah that's fine you're asking for a funding issue too yeah funding and proceeding forward with a modification of the bundled noi well I would make the recommendation that we do it it makes uh you know I I'm obviously push the bundled noi with you from right from the beginning after I found out about it y um and I do admit we are only okay so let's make a motion so we can go home so make a motion to recommend to the select board that they identify a funding stream and proceed forward with a modification renewal of the bundled noi to include grav Street Eastern na the blacksmith Brook also known as the Sugarloaf Brook and the Bloody Brook if possible I will make that motion second can we discuss the motion discussion um I would caution um the spe specifity of that um Motion in that it may want to be a little bit more generalized if you're looking at the noi language uh to include other areas of town that we may or may not even know of at this point in time um because every time you come back if we don't have it included have do an amendment again so there might be some language difference just do we have to re-engineer those if we don't as we add do we have to re-engineer every time re-engineer amend the bond do we need to get an engineering firm to come in and say this is what we're [Music] doing now that we've establish the noi is it the amendment I don't know uh uh technically because I don't know how that whole contractual Arrangement was done uh and what can be done we're one of only a handful of towns that has a bundled noi so I'd have to reach out for some clarification on that if we can do amendments on our own if has to go through the engineer that put it together if it has to go through a d okay let's let's throw out the old motion and let's come up with a new motion to um say move that the MVP Core Group request that the select board examine the the existing notice of intent um with the intention of modifying it to address farm sailes and other um Water Resources in town that could potentially um benefit from main benefit from regular maintenance and Pete's going to abstain would you say I would say SES say because there's a lot of SES that are already Exempted in the WPA yeah if they're agriculture you so it's gets it's all good Pete this is just a minor motion this is a recommendation engine to come in and do this for us I because it's obvious that we're not going to get through this without that that step so do we have a second I will second it and I'll friendly Amendment will drop the farm swells we'll just say water resources and town that could benefit from you know uh expanded expanded noi bundled noi CU it's not just an noi it's a bundle n i Greg are you writing this letter I'm sorry are you writing this letter are are you going to put this letter together it doesn't have to be um put together he can just be brought to the the select board saying that the MVP wants you to look into this it's wondering if someone's got going to have the motion oh down yes yeah Greg knows what we were the intent okay is there a second is there a second there is a second okay any discussion hearing none all those in favor I I I okay abstain yeah so that's 401 um great thank you guys you're amazing thank you John don't you need anything before I leave don't leave okay um is there anything else hearing none uh I'll take a motion to adjourn okay I rejn I will second that all those in favor I show hands thank you thank you