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Not Stepping in the Same River Twice: Making Strides in Ecological Restoration through Dam Removal
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Dams are still prevalent throughout the United States, however, much of this infrastructure is aging beyond its usable life. Though beneficial in a few ways, dams can have significant adverse effects on local ecosystems, which has led to a trend of dam assessment, retirement, and removal in the SNEP region and throughout the United States.
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Getting to Resilience: SNEP’s Strategic Plan for Restoration and Adaptation in Southeast Coastal New England
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SNEP has drafted and finalized our Strategic Plan, which is now posted to our website. This Plan lays the groundwork for how our Program can achieve our vision of safe and healthy waters, thriving waters and natural lands, and sustainable communities throughout southeast New England by 2050. The Plan also involves detailed priority action for Phase I (2021 – 2025).
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Project Spotlight
In this issue, we’re highlighting two SNEP-funded projects. The first, an ongoing flow-duration curve project that aims to assist municipalities in stormwater management and development planning, and another focused on mitigating nutrient pollution throughout Cape Cod in collaboration with the USGS.
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Flow Duration Curves: A New Model to Envision Healthy Watersheds and Resilient Communities
Urban landscapes can struggle with how to deal with stormwater. With so many paved surfaces, it’s already difficult to capture, store, treat, and, expel stormwater from city streets. Considering the trajectory of most urban populations, this is a problem that risks getting worse. Unmanaged stormwater can result in increased flooding to urban areas and decreased ecosystem health of nearby waterways due to contaminated runoff. A new project funded by SNEP aims to mitigate these risks by modeling projected stormwater flows and incorporating these models into future planning decisions to assist municipalities in the implementation of adaptive strategies such as those offered through green infrastructure.
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Targeting Nitrogen Hotspots
The problem of nitrogen pollution throughout the SNEP region is multi-faceted. Active nitrogen has cumulative downstream effects that can lead to algal blooms, fish kills, and environments with too little oxygen to support healthy ecosystems. In addition to remediating these sources of nitrogen, part of the solution also involves trapping it after it is released. Active nitrogen can travel in groundwater – slow moving underground streams. In collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey, SNEP is funding work throughout Cape Cod that aims to identify groundwater flows with high concentrations of nitrogen and remediating these areas by installing permeable barriers in the path of the groundwater flow, which convert active nitrogen to its inactive form as it passes through.
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SNEP Chat
For this iteration of SNEP Chat, we interviewed our Program partners to discuss their programs, their proudest moments of 2020, and what they’re looking forward to most in 2021.
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On The Horizon
- SNEP Watershed Grants is preparing to release its 2021 Request for Proposals (RFP) early this year. In 2021, the program expects to award $1.79 million in competitive grants to restore clean water, healthy ecosystems and sustainable communities in Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts. The first step in the application process is a simple Letter of Intent. Visit www.snepgrants.org to subscribe for updates and to receive the new RFP as soon as it's released.
- In partnership with MassDEP, RIDEM, and EPA Region 1, the Network is accepting applications from the Blackstone and Ten-Mile River Watershed communities for a Tracking and Accounting pilot project. This pilot project involves capacity building for implementation of stormwater management strategies as well as tracking and accounting of pollutant reductions. More information of the application can be found at: www.snepnetwork.org/stormwatercrediting
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Looking Ahead, Looking Around
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Program Updates
- The SNEP 2021 – 2025 Strategic Plan has been finalized and posted to our website. The Plan can be viewed here.
- Last year, SNEP contracted foundational work for an integrated ecosystem services framework (IESF), with the aim to inform future ecosystem service
valuation studies. The final report can be found here.
- SNEP has recently prepared and submitted a requested report to Congress on the capacity building efforts of the SNEP Network. This report will be made public on the SNEP website within the next few weeks.
- The SNEP Network recently completed the final session of the Wareham Leadership Exchange--a series where invited guests helped guide future redevelopment plans for Wareham Village by focusing on incorporating elements of climate resilience, stormwater management, and green infrastructure into design plans that are closely connected to economic development opportunities--and are currently drafting a report and developing case studies for discussions with town officials.
- The Narragansett Bay National Estuary Program expect to release the first draft of the Blackstone River Watershed Needs Assessment in February. The next meeting of the project group is expected to take place in March 2021.
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SNEP Newsletter Subscription
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