SOUTHWICK — With the federal government releasing the funds needed for the design and engineering of a proposed dredging project for Great and Canal brooks, town officials were updated on its progress.
“They’ve been here doing site visits. They were out in boats, and out in boots and now they’re in the data gathering [phase],” said Select Board Chair Diane Gale on Sept. 29, when she updated the board on the previous weeks’ meeting.
She said town officials were introduced to Deron Davis, a conservation engineer with the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and representatives from the Holyoke-based Pare Corporation and Tetra Tech, which is Connecticut-based.
“Those are two organizations working with [the NRCS] on the dredging opportunities to reopen the flows of the brooks and the lakes with flooding and erosion mitigation in mind,” Gale said.
She said that with most of the site work having been completed, the designing and engineering of the project now moves into the data gathering phase.
“They said the data gathering can take up to a year and then working [the data] into [dredging] models,” she said.
As part of the data gathering process, the NRCS said it needed data the town has gathered over the last several decades, and they learned the town already had much of it, she said.
“Because of our long-serving, forward-thinking, and meticulous Lake Management Committee, they have a ton of the data they were looking for … and they have years of it. So, they were very pleased to hear that that was available,” Gale said.
The NRSC is expected to have some “initial alternatives” to be developed by December and then draft plans by the spring while it continues gathering data and doing modeling, she said.
As part of the project, Gale said the NRCS will hold an informational meeting for the public on Wednesday, Oct. 29. The specific times and location will be announced as the date gets closer.
Lake Management Committee Chair Richard Grannells estimated if the dredging project is funded, it could cost as much as $10 million.
Earlier this year, the dredging project was in jeopardy after the federal Department of Government Efficiency cut funding for the design and engineering projects.
However, Grannells learned the funding had been restored to start the survey of the two brooks.
While it may appear that Canal and Great brooks supply the water for the Congamond Lakes three Great Ponds — which is how the state defines them — they serve as outlets for the ponds’ water during heavy rains.
Now, however, both brooks feed into the ponds, which in turn, washes decades of sediments, nutrients into them, which is one of the LMC’s primary missions — to keep the ponds healthy.
The weir gate — which adjusts the levels of the ponds — under the bridge at 13 Berkshire Ave., has been permanently closed for years because opening it would allow sediments from Great Brook to wash into the ponds during heavy rains.
Just over 20 years ago, Great Brook was running stream that stretched from the weir gate at Berkshire Avenue all the way to Westfield. Debris, including the trees that came down during the 2008 ice storm, have stopped the brook’s flow.
Canal Brook was created in the 1830s as part of the New Haven and Northampton Canal project and Canal Brook, also known as the Farmington Canal, was where it connected to the South Pond of Congamond Lakes.
