Bringing A Buried Stream Back To Daylight

By Kendra Bobowick

In the dark for decades, an underground stream will again see daylight.

“Thank goodness. We’re about to do it,” said resident and Candlewood Valley Trout Unlimited (CVTU) President James Belden, referring to bringing a piped stream’s flow back above ground at Dickinson Park.

Pushed below ground to make room for the manmade Dickinson pool in the 1950s, a stream feeding into Deep Brook has been forced to flow below ground for more than 60 years. The pool was filled in for health code reasons in 2006.

“Happy is not the word,” said Land Use Deputy Director Rob Sibley, preferring to say “ecstatic.” Raising the stream back to the surface “was the hope ever since we closed the pool.” He added, “Reconstituting a natural stream is a fantastic project.”

Grant funds from the Natural Resource and Conservation Service’s (NRCS) Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program (WHIP) and in-kind work from town crews and volunteers will bring the flow back into the sunlight. The NRCS is a branch of the United States Department of Agriculture. Nagy Brothers Construction Co. Inc was awarded the contract for its bid of roughly $217,000 for the project.

Mr Belden anticipates that work will begin this month and be completed by the fall. Todd Bobowick with the NRCS will be supervising. Trout unlimited is the grantee that put this together with the town’s cooperation, Mr Belden said.

Assistant Director of Parks Carl Samuelson said, “We are ready to go.” He has a project completion date for September, and work needs to occur during the low flow season, which is July and August, he said.

Describing the upcoming project, Mr Belden said, “We are just putting back what was there.” The area had once been watercourses and wetlands before being disturbed. He said, “A pipe is not habitat and not natural, so we are restoring that and daylighting that and creating a natural, working stream system.” He is pleased to “get it back to being a healthy wetlands system.” Thinking of the stream shuttled below ground, he said, “To take an actual watercourse that was living and breathing,” he sighed, “it just displaced water and removed 1,000 feet of natural habitat.”

How will the restoration work? Pipes will be in place to create an artificial stream. Once pipes are removed, the stream will flow.

How fast will this happen? “Poof, it’s there,” Mr Sibley said.

Mr Belden said, “Stream life will start almost immediately, amphibians will come almost immediately, and smaller organisms will be back within months…but it will take a couple years to reinstate [normal stream life].”

This project with its engineering and construction will also include replacing a road covert along Point O’ Rocks Road, and buffer vegetation. Heavy work goes to contractors, and volunteers will do later projects like planting trees.

The work is a “true collaboration” said Mr Sibley, naming the Public Works Department, Parks and Recreation Department, CVTU, the Land Use Agency, and NRCS. “The town has been looking forward to this for quite some time.” He said, “I can’t wait for the greater public to be able to see what was there and see what we have not seen in almost a century.”

Flooding and storms in past years have delayed ongoing environmental efforts at the park on projects that began in 2007. At that time crews and volunteers restored and stabilized stream banks throughout Dickinson, Mr Belden said. Also in collaboration with the NRCS, he said, “We improved planting, buffer plantings, river banks.”

The 2007 project was roughly $55,000. Similarly to the upcoming stream daylighting, the NRCS grant pays for 75 percent of estimated costs and 25 percent is completed through in-kind services and volunteer service matched by the town, CVTU members, and volunteers.

According to the NRCS website, the WHIP grant program is a voluntary program for conservation-minded landowners who want to develop and improve wildlife habitat on agricultural land, nonindustrial private forest land, and Indian land.