Lexington Minuteman, Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Lexington - The Town of Lexington’s Engineering and Conservation departments are working with the Lexington Conservation Stewards, a local volunteer group, to develop a new Watershed Stewardship Program to help care for the town’s streams.

The program, which is slated to begin this spring, will train volunteers to survey stream shorelines for problems such as stormwater run-off pollution, impaired drainage pipes, and excessive sediment deposition.

“While Lexington doesn’t have a major river running through it, we do have 20 brooks that all start within the boundaries of the town and flow to the Charles, Mystic, or Shawsheen Rivers,” said David Pavlik of the Town’s Engineering department.

“These brooks play important roles in our own community and the communities downstream. Instituting a Watershed Stewardship Program will help us to have a better understanding of the issues impacting the health and function of Lexington’s waterways and how we can best address them.”

Efforts are currently under way to recruit volunteers to conduct an initial round of shoreline surveys during the spring and summer of 2009.

Volunteer teams of two or three people will walk half-mile brook sections, logging observations such as signs of erosion, drainage pipe conditions, trash debris accumulation, and aquatic invasive species. The data collected in these surveys will eventually be displayed in map format and used to prioritize follow-up and remediation efforts to improve water quality and stream function.

“We’re drawing heavily from work that the Charles River and Mystic River Watershed Associations have done in their Find It and Fix It programs,” said Stew Kennedy, a Conservation Commissioner and Lexington Conservation Steward. “We have a wonderful team of students from the environmental lab at Minuteman Regional High School test-driving the program this winter, so by the time we hit the ground with volunteers, we’ll be very prepared.”

In November, the Lexington Conservation Stewards held a trial brook clean-up day, removing trash from a stretch of the Vine Brook and clearing debris from outfalls. More work days such as this will be scheduled as the stream surveys identify areas that need attention.

“We have an excellent volunteer-based program for caring for our conservation land in town,” said Karen Mullins, Lexington’s conservation administrator. “The Watershed Stewardship Program will fill in the missing link of tending to our town’s water resources as well.”

To learn more about the Watershed Stewardship Program or to volunteer, contact the Conservation Assistant at 781-862-0500 Ext. 240, or visit their Web site.

The Jan. 9 “First Fridays” event of the League of Women Voters will feature a presentation on the Watershed Stewardship Program at 9:30 a.m. at Cary Memorial Library, 1874 Mass. Ave.