Mill River Greenway Initiative

A community-based steward for the Mill River

JW Sinton

MRGI HAS A NEW WEBSITE!

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MRGI Has a new website

Dear Mill River Lovers,

We’ve returned just in time to bring you some joy during these hard times. Lots has been happening to all of us, and for MRGI, it’s been a time to focus our energies. on:
1. A new website;
2. Extending the greenway itself;
3. A Mill River Learning Initiative.

We’ll leave #s 2 and 3 for an email next month, but right now, please concentrate on the new website. The url hasn’t changed, but Neal Bastek, our comrade in arms for a decade, has finished his amazing work, and we’ve now hired Carey Baker of Midnightson Designs to create our new one. We have no idea whether this design works or not, and it’s still in progress.

We need you to make this a responsive site. Send us your evaluation, your suggestions, edits, your furious grumblings and joyful outbursts. Whatever you’ve got, we can not only handle it, we need it! Send it along to us at info@millrivergreenway.org.

John and Gaby

Fund Drive to Link the Mill River to Broad Brook

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Fund Drive to Link the Mill River to Broad Brook

Please help the City of Northampton acquire this critical link!

Dear Mill River Lovers,

Steve McDonough on behalf of the Leeds Civic Association, Friends of Northampton Trails, and Yours Truly urge you to contribute to this great project. Here’s how Steve describes it:

Northampton seeks to purchase 44.7 acres of land in Leeds located north of Beaver Brook between Haydenville Road and the Leeds bike path.  The acquisition would expand the current Beaver Brook conservation area while helping to connect the Mill River Greenway to the Beaver Brook/Broad Brook Greenway and Broad Brook/Fitzgerald Lake Greenway.

As we send this message out to you MRGI folk on January 13, we already have more than $2000 donated of the $15000 goal. You can donate directly to the City of Northampton via the Office of Planning and Sustainability, 210 Main St., Northampton, MA 01060 or simply click on this site: https://charity.gofundme.com/o/en/team/beaver-brook-land-purchase

Due to the property’s connection with the other conservation areas, it is also important as a wildlife corridor.  Deer, bear, deer, fox, porcupines and turkeys have all been sited on a frequent basis.  And just in the past few months, river otters have been spotted in Beaver Brook on at least two occasions, likely using it as a migration route to and from the Mill River!

The area has become a popular recreation area as it connects with the trails along the Mill River Greenway and the Beaver Brook Conservation area with the main access off the bike path near the Beaver Brook bridge.  There are about 2 miles of well-maintained trails on the property and also some ‘bread crumb’ trails that lead out to Route 9 and the new wildlife blind.

The acquisition would also add a major land parcel in support of Northampton’s Multi-Use Trail Plan to develop a Northampton trail that encircles the city building on existing trail networks where possible.

Thanks from all of us at MRGI, LCA, FNT, and the City of Northampton!

Invasive Plant Management Walk, Lathrop Community, Easthampton,Oct. 28

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Reigster early, folks, and learn how to manage invasive plants on this walk at the Lathrop Community in Easthampton! Learn how and why they are removing invasive plants to protect wildlife in Lathrop’s forests. See what is replacing the invasives in areas where they’ve worked for up to five years.

Registration required. Walks at 1:00 and 3:30.

Check out Lathrop Land’s website.

 

 

Late Summer Email Blast

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Welcome back to the Mill River, everyone, welcome back from wherever you’ve been, even if you’ve only traveled a few miles from home!

This late summer newsletter is a teaser about what’s to come but first, we must give thanks for the gifts the river has received. Of all these gifts, none has been more meaningful than the work that Professor Susannah Howe and her engineering design clinic students at Smith College have done, most recently, in May of this year, the design of the MassCentral Rail Trail Connection that completes the connection from the rail trail in Northampton to the planned trail linking Haydenville to Williamsburg Center. Thank you, engineering graduates Beatrix Dalton, Kelsey Hammond, Serena Cattau, Jess McKnight and especially Prof. Howe, whose design teams have saved our local towns tens of thousands of dollars in project costs and given so generously of themselves – you are amazing people!

Our most exciting news: With the support of Historic Northampton, we are planning to incorporate lessons from the Mill River into the curricula of the schools in both Northampton and Williamsburg! We’ll have more substantial information for you next month, but we wanted to prepare you for what we’ll be calling the Mill River Curriculum Initiative (yes, MRCI)and to ask whether any of our MRGI members would be interested in becoming part of this project. The Williamsburg and Northampton school systems are, of course, independent of each other, but we’ll be coordinating our efforts to come up with projects and experiences that are effective for both.

  • For Williamsburg: Contact Gaby Immerman at info@millrivergreenway.org. She and our good friend Nick Dines will be working closely with Principal Stacey Jenkins at the Anne T. Dunphy school.
  • For Northampton: Contact Kathleen Bamford at bolete@tutanota.com. Kathleen is a MRGI godsend, who contacted us this spring. She recently returned to the Valley from Vermont, knows our region intimately, and has expertise in environmental/place-based education and writing. Kathleen will be reaching out to a number of educators in the Northampton schools.

Our other major fall focus will be the Revamping of our Website. Yes, it’s been too long, way too long, and John will be reworking the contents while Neal oversees an update of the site itself. Please let John or Neal know your thoughts on the website – what we need to include, delete, embellish, and beautify. You can reach either of us at info@millrivergreenway.org

Great news from UMass: Professor Jack Ahern of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning will be using the Mill River watershed as the site for an amazing Designed Biodiversity Studythat his talented third-year students will conduct this fall. In Jack’s words: “The idea came to me after reading the shocking UN report this spring about the critical state of biodiversity globally. I plan to focus on biodiversity in designed/inhabited landscapes and making linkages between these landscapes and protected landscape core areas and corridors [in this case, the Mill River Greenway].” Jack is a superb scholar and teacher. We can’t wait to get the results!

Finally, check out these great events that MRGI is co-sponsoring

  • Northampton Council Candidate Forum on Climate & Environment 

Sept 11, 2019: 

Location: Northampton Senior Center

6:30-7:20pm Ward 1 candidate forum
7:20-7:30pm Transition b/w forums
7:30-8:20pm Ward 2, 4 candidate forum

Sept 12, 2019:

Location: Lathrop Community Room, 1 Shallowbrook Ln
6:30-7:20pm Ward 5 candidate forum
7:20-7:30pm Transition b/w forums
7:30-8:30pm Ward 7 candidate forum

 

  • Great Tree Bicycle Tour: A community bike tour of Northampton’s most notable trees

October 20, 2019, 11am-2pm Details and registration forthcoming at: FNTG.net

Here are the trees on the route:

START: Pulaski Park London Plane

Conz St American elm

Columbus Ave Champion Pin oak

Smith College Champion Ginko

Vernon St American Sycamore

Crescent St. Copper beech

Stoddard St–gas leaks/new trees

FSB–volcano mulching/Norway maple

Keyes St Champion Tulip tree

Bardwell White Oak

1 Corticelli–White Mulberry

End: Maines Field–summary of city’s tree program

 

  • Devil’s Den to Lickingwater Book Events with John Sinton

Sept. 25 5:00-7:00Northampton Neighbors, Senior Center. How Nonotuck became the major New England crossroads for Native Americans and gained primacy of place in the Valley. How the river dictated Northampton’s shape and why we diverted it out of town. In the end, why does the Mill River matter?

Oct. 8 7:00-8:30Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary, Easthampton. The Mill River’s role in the creation of Northampton and how environmental transformations in this little watershed reflect those of the larger world.

Nov. 7 12:15-1:00  Springfield Museums Museum à la Carte Series, Springfield. “Devil’s Den to Lickingwater: How a Small, Little-Known River Shaped the Landscape and History of The Connecticut River Valley.”

Remember, the river runs through ALL of us!

John, Gaby, and Neal