The town of Warren is looking at Riverside Park in a new light, according to Conservation Commission member Caitrin Noel, who presented a draft of the Riverside Park Management Plan to town officials at the February 21 select board meeting.
The 48-page draft plan outlines the town’s goals for the park located along the upper Mad River corridor; a popular recreational area, the park sustained significant flooding caused by Hurricane Irene.
Noel said the Riverside Park area was one of the first opportunities, north of Warren Village, for “the river to blow off some steam” during high flow.
The goals include protecting water quality and restoring floodplain areas as well as protecting wildlife habitat and allowing the river channel to return to its natural state.
The Riverside Park Management Plan also includes a flood erosion summary and plan of scheduled maintenance in addition to the goals for flood recovery and a vegetation management plan.
The plan also recommends keeping infrastructure out of the park, according to Noel, because additional structures will introduce more instability into the system.
In regard to the plan’s fifth goal, allowing the river to assume its natural state and not change the river after a flood event, Noel said, “In a flood event or a change in topography, let it be and adjust and move on.”
Select board member Bob Ackland asked how the plan would have dealt with the August flood and whether it should have been filled back in.
Noel said, “What makes sense is to have a hands-off approach and not filling in the channel and make a bridge over the chasm; we need to be really thoughtful about how we respond to flooding and erosion.”
Conservation Commission member George Schenk said that the new channel created a braiding quality in the river that can absorb an enormous amount of energy.
In addition, he said, “The changes that Irene brought habitat diversity, there was a physical change to the environment that in the healing process leaves rich deposit that is biologically complex and interesting; the river needs that kind of complexity.”
Returning the river to its original state after a flood, he said, “becomes more destructive.”
In terms of its future continued use as a recreational area, Schenk said, “It represents a classic conflict for the human desire for land in relation to water. Where do we put those kinds of conflicts? It may be that we can’t have a Frisbee field every place we want one. If we constantly choose the human preference, the environment will fail.”
While the plan is still in its draft stages, the vegetation management is going to begin this spring with the planting of several willow trees along the riverbank.
Town officials will evaluate the plan again in early spring.
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