I think the thing I love most about my job is being able to come out to sites like this where we have been able to come in and through some simple actions be able to open up habitat for fish and wildlife when I got into restoration work it was really wanting to restore our damaged streams and rivers to the benefit of the fish and wildlife that live in them what I really love about what I'm able to do here is that I can pair that with helping municipalities fix their infrastructure fix the roads and make both the stream and the road more resilient to big storms and to threats of climate change it's also really rewarding when you get the highway departments to come out and actually walk through our stream with you after you've done a restoration action such as a culvert replacement or dam removal and see how excited they can get about the fish and wildlife industry have you heard about a project in your local community that has worked to restore aquatic habitat or protect the natural waterways of the Commonwealth if so you might already have a Massachusetts division of ecological restoration project in your backyard der is a state agency that works to restore and protect Rivers wetlands and watersheds in Massachusetts for the benefit of both people and the environment der stream continuity program is one of the important ways they're working to restore streams by improving the performance of culverts and bridges and on building capacity to install replacement crossings that meet improved design criteria as outlined in the Massachusetts stream Crossing standards the standards are based on the concept of having a natural stream flowing underneath the road this allows streams they move water down to lower areas they also especially in high flow situations move rocks wood and other material Downstream and provide valuable habitat for fish and other Wildlife along the stream Corridor there are over 25 000 coverts in Massachusetts many of these structures are old undersized and present issues for both the wildlife passing through and the roads passing over benefits not only the ecological benefits of restoring fish and wildlife passage but they also benefit on the stream quarter by restoring natural stream processes so the movement of sediment natural material which creates the habitat That's essential to the fish and wildlife using the corridor the projects also have the benefit of addressing aging infrastructure that often our municipalities are trying to maintain and manage this infrastructure is particularly vulnerable to changes that we're seeing in our climatic patterns for example this reach just in the past couple years has experienced drought so really low flow conditions where having access to Habitat is pretty critical and then also increased precipitation events intense precipitation which can further cause problems for the infrastructure that the towns are trying to maintain and manage I can't emphasize enough how important our partners are we don't get these projects done with our partners and having the support both Financial engineering all kinds of support technical support from division or ecological Restorations is the only way we can make these projects happen while improved Crossing provides many benefits we recognize that the planning permitting and upfront costs required to meet the stream Crossing standards can be daunting to many communities we support in-depth training opportunities for municipalities on the Culvert replacement process and we provide tools and resources that help them facilitate that process things like scopes of work or ideas on types of structures that would meet their goals and our goals we also have a grant program that provides seed funding to help them replace their structures we offer that program on an annual basis and it also covers various phases of the projects that includes design engineering permitting and construction the stream continuity program was developed flipped to address some of these barriers to covert replacement by providing assessment technical assistance training and grant funding communities that are interested in replacing culverts and improving Stream flow in their towns can find more information on the Der website: www.mass.gov/der.
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