The Housatonic River Restoration Plan by the People of Berkshire County
Preface The report you hold in your hands is not the usual Natural Resource Damage planning document. It does not contain pages of bar graphs, pie charts, or formulaic recommendations for how to restore the Housatonic River. It is unlike any other planning document because we who speak through it want a river plan unlike any other. The Housatonic is in desperate need of physical reparation from years of insult and degradation, but the abuse has done more than dirty the river. It has also broken the community’s connections to the river. This rupture has compounded the neglect and will inhibit the river’s restoration if left unhealed. A community that neither cares for nor understands the river cannot be expected to aid in its revival. The Housatonic must be restored to its rightful place in the hearts and daily lives of Berkshire’s people. To do this will require more than the standard remedies of fish ladders and land preservation. Those things, while all to the good, must reside within a locally generated and ongoing vision of education and involvement in order for genuine restoration to occur. This report is that collective vision—unprecedented, painstaking, and representing a consensus of the diverse constituencies who live or work in the Housatonic watershed. It is what we—the river’s true trustees—want the Natural Resource Damage plan for our river to be. Today's Housatonic is the tragic result of years of malign neglect. Like other industrial New England rivers, the Housatonic was a source of energy for the mills that lined it. In dark counterpoint to its thrifty use of hydropower, however, industry polluted the river with a cascade of wastes. Little wonder that residents and municipalities followed suit in a downward spiral of pollution and alienation. While the past two decades brought incremental improvements via the federal Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts, which tightened industrial and sewage discharges, they could not undo the magnitude and multiplicity of damage that had been wrought. The river had ceased to be experienced as the life source it is. Its fate lay in the hands of seemingly unanswerable forces that discharged their toxic and persistent effluents, and left the river for dead. But it did not die. Though many turned their backs, the river had its champions even in its degraded state—those who recognized its worth and who pioneered its appreciation long before such sentiment was the prevailing fashion. There is no way to honor all of them in this space, but a short list must include Joan Flood, a dedicated conservationist whose persistence resulted in the preservation of many key parcels in the reach north of Woods Pond; Lon Nordeen, who made a personal mission of annual cleanups and channel clearing in the river so that canoeists could travel safely downstream; and Betty Phinney, a science teacher who brought understanding of the Housatonic into the county's classrooms. The contributions of these three live on as their legacy and inspire others still with us who carried the torch alongside them, most notably Morgan Bulkeley, whose eloquent writings on the natural history of the river bolstered public interest in its restoration, and Cissy Paddock, a founder and leader of the watchdog Housatonic River Watershed Association. The achievements of these advocates echo through the contemporary voices of this report. The report’s compilers have cast a wide net, drawing in more than 1100 individuals representing a cross section of Berkshire life: environmentalists, farmers, business and industry people, sportsmen and women, students, and municipal leaders. In doing so, they have set a new standard in river and watershed planning by incorporating and balancing these manifold interests in the report’s recommendations. But the current level of spirit is still a tenuous proposition. A new generation of alienated residents could await us if we do not capitalize on the sentiment and opportunity of the moment and lay the groundwork for real change. Just as we the residents of Berkshire are the stewards of the river—out of love, not legal mandate—our vision and broad involvement must guide the expenditure of Natural Resource Damage funds in order to ensure a permanent success. If these funds are used for one-time fixes instead of comprehensive, self-perpetuating programs, we will have lost the battle yet again, and another fifty years down the road a fresh round of restoration will be necessary. But if we do invest in such a long-range plan, and in the spiritual as well as physical restoration of the river, and if we bestow that task upon those who will inevitably be responsible for its maintenance, we will have made the most of this moment. Not only will we accomplish the removal of existing contamination, PCBs chief among them, but we will raise a cohort of children who will watch carefully and prevent such wanton destruction from ever occurring again. We will not only preserve land along the banks and up the mountains’ slopes, but ensure that all the land that feeds the river, whether developed or not, is managed with river and aquifer health foremost in mind. Years from now, no distant planner in Washington or Boston will comb the Housatonic’s banks for rare plants, lead a fourth-grade class to troll for insects in the current, fish its waters, canoe its length, or sit quietly on a hillside hearing it move below. We whose many voices speak as one in these pages will do those things. The restoration plan for the river will not work unless we are an integral part of it—equal partners with the agencies administering the funds in planning and securing the river’s fate. If we are not, we will have bought only a little time instead of an entire future.
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