We’ve changed our name.  We’re now the MILL RIVER GREENWAY INITIATIVE.  We did this simply to distinguish our group from others whose name bears the title Mill River Greenway.  We hope you’ll find it easy to change our abbreviation from MRG to MRGI, Margie for short.

What’s a charrette?  A charrette is a way for design professionals to get together to come up with solutions to a problem, such as “What might a Mill River Greenway look like?”  It’s a collaborative process in which landscape architects work together in a short time frame to present ideas.

On the evening of April 18th, a group of landscape architects from the Western Massachusetts Section of the Boston Society of Landscape Architects will gather in Florence with a small group of local citizens to develop ideas for different parts of the Mill River from Williamsburg to downtown Northampton.  The results will be presented in Williamsburg the first week of May and in Northampton at the Mill River Greenway Initiative party on May 10th from 5:00-7:00 at Pedal to Properties on Strong Street.

For a full description of the charrette, go to Mill River Charrette.

This has been a long, drawn out springtime, so let’s celebrate it with some river walks at the upper, middle, and lower end of the river.

1. April 14 Saturday at 10:00-12:00.  Dam site of the 1874 Disaster plus the Searsville Dams with Williamsburg historian Ralmon Black.  We’ve been waiting for this one for a long time, so before the trees leaf out and the bugs come to bite, we’ll gather at the parking lot off Petticoat Hill Rd. behind the Dunphy School in Williamsburg.  If you plan to go on this short hike, please register with us here at the website so we can be sure to set up an appropriate car pool.  Just send a message to info@millrivergreenway.org  In case of heavy rain, we’ll reschedule the walk.

2. April 28th Saturday at 10:00-12:00. Riverwalk at the Northampton Community (Bean/Allard) Farm in Florence.  Walk will be held rain or shine.

Meeting Spot: Crimson & Clover Farm, 215 Spring St. in Florence

Connections: The Nature & History of the Mill River and the Northampton Community Farm

Trip Leaders:

Laurie Sanders, a well known local naturalist, will share information about the flora and fauna found along the hedge rows and within the forested corridor along this stretch of the Mill River.

Elizabeth Sharpe, author of In the Shadow of the Dam, will provide an historic perspective for this stretch of the Mill River and the impact of the 1874 Disaster.

John Sinton, co-moderator of the Mill River Greenway Initiative, will give a brief overview about the role this reach of river plays in connecting  the upper and lower sections of a proposed Mill River Greenway.

This walk is sponsored by the Mill River Greenway Initiative, Grow Food Northampton, and Friends of Northampton Trails and Greenways, and the Northampton Conservation Commission.

Limited to 15 participants

RSVP info@millrivergreenway.org

3. May 11th Friday at 4:30-5:30. The Hidden Mill River in Northampton.  John Sinton and Sky Sutton will lead this short walk from Paradise Pond at Smith College to the Hidden Mill River where it still runs through downtown Northampton.  The walk will emphasize the geography of Northampton’s early years and we’ll talk about the history of floods on the Mill and Connecticut Rivers.  In case of heavy rain we’ll reschedule this walk.  As a courtesy so we know how many people to accommodate, please register with us at info@millrivergreenway.org

4. June Riverwalk in Leeds, date and time tba, led by Stephanie and Peter Flinker.

We hope you survived “winter” and are off to a great new year. We wanted to quickly let you know what we were up to in 2011 and what to look forward to from us in 2012. 2011 was a year of making connections and momentum building. We’ve got a great foundation to work from this year.

We got serious enough about the Greenway effort to take it public, and in late March we launched millrivergreenway.org (Thanks for visiting!). The website is the information hub for the Greenway effort. We’ve gathered a great collection of resources already, from stunning photos to historical maps, and we’re always on the lookout for more — send us some great content about the river and we’ll put it up.

Growing Community at the Bean Allard Farm

In July, several of us scoped out a river trail on the Bean Allard farm property in Northampton to be a part of the new recreation and farming complex. Working with Northampton’s planner, Wayne Feiden, and members of the Grow Food Northampton community, students at Smith’s Center for the Environment, Ecological Design and Sustainability led by Reid Bertone-Johnson, a Smith faculty member, will be designing a trail along the newly acquried Mill River greenway from Meadow Street to the Bean farm. Gaby Immerman and her Smith students also did some invasive species surveying, finding a good deal of multiflora rose, knotweed, and bittersweet that needs our attention.

Hurricane and Rain

In August we were visited by hurricane Irene and a 500-year flood event on the Mill River. We all witnessed the raw power of the river as it ran through several sections of Rt. 9 in Williamsburg and the flood control gate was raised in Northampton for the first time in 50 years.

With the ground so saturated, the river seemed to stay swollen all fall, right through the Halloween nor-easter that left many of us without power for multiple days.

Smith College Gets Involved

In November we participated in a Kahn Institute program at Smith, an interdisciplinary collaboration of Smith faculty exploring the possibilities of using the Mill River Greenway Initiative to address the ecological needs of the river while connecting the college to the community in new ways. John has led several groups on tours of the historic Mill River from downtown Northampton to Bay State, pointing out the original path of the river and the early beginnings of the industry on which Northampton depended.

A Look Ahead for 2012

There’s a lot to look forward to in 2012. We hope to spend more time with more people out on the river this year spreading the word about the Greenway Initiative, and we plan to continue to grow and mature this modest citizens group and build public will for the Greenway. To that end we’re in the early phases of collaborating with with the Williamsburg Village Center visioning Committee and the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission on exploring the possibilities of a multi use corridor connecting the two village centers. Northampton and PVPC have applied for a grant to do an ecological survey of the river, which would require volunteer help from our members.

We’re planning several riverwalks, and will be especially excited to welcome Laurie Sanders, who has volunteered to lead a walk on the Bean-Allard land this spring or summer. John will continue to lead walks from downtown Northampton to Bay State, and we’re hoping to corral members in Bay State, Florence, Leeds, Haydenville, and Williamsburg into leading trips. We’ll also plan a paddle in March or April from Hulburt’s Pond (Arcadia Refuge) to South Street in Northampton.

Exciting projects are taking shape up and down the river, and we probably don’t know about many of them all so drop us a note if you hear of something! We’re looking forward to getting involved with all of you.

Cheers,

Neal and John

P.S. Help spread the word about this effort and forward this email on to your friends.
P.P.S. You can connect with us on facebook.

Northampton Residents to Vote Whether to Repeal the Community Preservation Act on November 1st.

There will be a single referendum question on Northampton’s election ballot this November 1st: The question is whether Northampton should repeal the Community Preservation Act (CPA).  A “no” vote will allow the CPA to continue, and a “yes” vote will repeal the CPA.
Proponents of  “Vote NO” to Save the CPA,” point to the program’s successes: It has
protected hundreds of acres of open space, preserved
some of important historical landmarks and has supported the
construction of new recreation fields and affordable housing. In addition, the CPA has brought millions of dollars to our city — the $3.8 million the city collected in CPA funds have been matched by over $17 million from other sources.

Opponents state that residents of the city already pay too many taxes.

For more information: http://www.northamptonma.gov/cpc/

For a map of all CPA projects: http://www.northamptonma.gov/cpc/googlemap/index.html

Here are some great new photos, folks.  The three from professional photogapher, Janine Norton, show the mud line after the waters subsided, a great way to measure the height of the water.  One from MRG member Bill Williams shows the the dam at Paradise Pond, which usually measures about 20 feet from lip to splash pool, but looks  like a minor falls during Irene’s high point.  Bill’s other photo is the Corps of Engineers’ barrier on West Street at the 1940 diversion.  The barrier was constructed in the 1950s and hadn’t been used until Irene hit.

Well, folks, what a storm, what a peculiar storm.  In the history of Mill River floods that goes back 350 years, this was one of the few times that the Connecticut River tributaries had record high water, while the big river remained well below record levels.  This is chiefly due to the season of the year — it’s late summer, and there’s no snow pack to add to the big river, so, while the Connecticut is plenty high, it’s not the main source of our farmers’ woes.  It’s the Deerfield River, for example, that did most of the damage in the Pioneer Valley.

Furthermore, summer floods, caused by hurricanes, tend to be pretty flashy.  Look at the Mill River statistics in today’s Gazette: The Mill River peaked at a record high of 16.42 feet at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, eclipsing the old record of 15.6 feet.  The river had receded to 6.95 feet as of Tuesday afternoon.  All of you who got out on Sunday and then viewed the situation on Monday, caught the meaning of the term “flash flood,” and you’ve got a hint of the fear that the Mill River brought to the valley that dreadful morning of May 16th, 1874, when the dam on the Mill River’s East Branch failed and caused the flash flood that killed 139 people.

Irene visits the Pro-Brush dam in Florence, 3:00 p.m. 8/29

We’re still digesting the enormity of this weekend’s flooding of the Mill river — and cleaning up our own yards — we’ll scratch some more thoughts together once things settle down a bit. Hoping Northampton fares ok when the Connecticut River crests tomorrow and thankful that no one’s been injured around here. Lots of water to deal with, lets make sure we’re helping out our neighbors along the river and otherwise who are dealing with serious damage.

In the meantime please share your pics and videos of the river during Irene with us in the comments section below.

Here’s a compilation of Burgy village flooding footage from Williamsburg resident Tom Adams of Reelife Productions

The town of Goshen is desperately seeking some new members for the conservation commission. They are currently down to two members and can’t reach a quorum.

The commission is charged with protecting the town’s wetlands including the headwaters of the west branch of the Mill River. It’s a great opportunity for a passionate river advocate to step into a leadership role and help protect the town’s natural resources.

If you think you would be a good fit for the commission please consider getting involved. If you know of someone else who would be a good fit, please spread the word. More information about the committee can be found here.

Smith College’s Center for the Environment, Ecological Design, and Sustainablity (CEEDS) in collaboration with Connecticut River Watershed Council (CRWC), Mill River Greenway (MRG), and Grow Food Northampton (GFN), will be hosting an invasive species removal workshop on Saturday, August 6th from 12:30 to 4:30PM. The first half of the workshop will take place in the new CEEDS center in Wright Hall on Smith College campus in Northampton MA. This workshop will include identification of invasive plants common to the region, removal techniques, as well as a discussion of resources for those hoping to organize a removal event within their own community. The second half of the workshop will involve hands-on practice of invasive removal on GFN’s property on Meadow St. Participants are responsible for transportation to the GFN site.

This workshop is FREE but registration is required. Space is limited, so please register quickly! We will provide some tools, but if you have hand clippers or gloves, please bring them and plan to wear or bring long sleeves and pants. For more information or to register, contact Brittany Innis at brittany.innis@gmail.com.  Directions and more information on what to bring will be provided to registered participants.