Conservation Commission meeting minutes 5-6-2010

May 6, 2010 Conservation Commission Minutes 1. Meetings will be on the first Thurs. of each month at the Proctor Library in Ascutney at 7:00pm. Members present: Gary Pelton, Chris Harris, Tina Wood, and MaryBeth Reville. Minutes of the April 1 meeting were accepted. The meeting was held at Martin Memorial Hall because of the need for space for extra people and a power point presentation by John Broker-Campbell and Jason Rasmussen of the Southern Windsor County Regional Planning Commission. The meeting was called to order at 7:10pm. The presentation concerned river bank erosion along the Black River. The SWCRPC conducted an assessment of the Black River and it's tributaries in 2007/8. The importance of mitigation efforts to prevent erosion was stressed. Buffer zones should ideally be 6 times the width of the river. There are areas in Weathersfield where the potential exists for serious bank erosion. Identifying these areas and documenting them should be done as it could make the town eligible for federal funding to pay for mitigation work. Marie Caduto, watershed coordinator for the Agency of Natural Resources, talked about the importance of vegetative buffers along rivers and streams. The agency is interested in acquiring management rights to the buffer zones when possible. Building in vulnerable areas should be discouraged. Marie said a town is 9 times more likely to be sued for allowing building in a dangerous area than for refusing permission to build. Kelly Stettner of the Black River Action Team was also in attendance. She has worked with her group on clean-up and water testing of the river. Also in attendance was Gil Whittemore of the Weathersfield Planning Commission and Willis Wood of the Weathersfield Land Preservation Assosciation. The Con Com is considering work-shops on the importance of buffers to maintain agricultural land and how we can benefit from different size buffers. The state has a model of a flume with a river, houses, trees, cows, etc. to demonstrate what happens in a flood. Perhaps we could use it. Gary said that Springfield 4th and 5th graders have been planting trees as a buffer for a few years south of Stoughton Pond. They will be doing it again this coming week-May 12,13,14 and 17. Betsy Owen has coordinated this effort and it has proven very helpful. Gary asked for information from other members of the ConCom about our duties and plans as he has been asked to speak to a group later this month. One of the things he plans to talk about is invasive plant species and how to get rid of them. He will take some examples to show. Gary also suggested that we need to have two work-shops on invasive plants. One in spring for early plants like Garlic Mustard and one in late August for things like Japanese Knotweed and Purple Loosetrife. There was a good response to our query for info on salamander crossings in town. Four sites were identified and several people volunteered to help. We were too late for this year but plan to make an effort earlier next spring with a work-shop in March. On the same subject we talked about the program at Springfield Library on May 13th at 7pm. Naturalist Jan Lambert will speak on spring amphibians. It is free and open to the public. Tina also said that we had a wonderful walk on the Fellows property which we are hoping to preserve. The meeting was adjourned at 8:55pm. Submitted by MaryBeth Reville.