Landscaping done this spring at the town beach has resulted in an unplanned $4,500 expense in the Parks and Recreation budget and in a violation of a 2012 order of conditions for part of the town’s stormwater management system in the Bare Hill Pond watershed. Still, interim recreation director Bob O’Shea said the beach is a safer place since he hired a private landscaping firm to eliminate overgrown plants and bushes along both sides of a stone windbreak near the boat ramp, leaving sand on the beach side and one bush and mulch on the parking lot side.
The Finance Committee voted June 7 to deny an after-the-fact request for a Reserve Fund transfer to cover the $4,500 cost of eliminating the vegetation. Soon after, town officials discovered the work had taken place without the required permission of the Conservation Commission.
“I believe the landscaping was mistakenly done without permission to address a safety concern in good faith,” wrote Bruce Leicher, chair of the Bare Hill Pond Watershed Management Committee, in answer to a question from the Press.
Vegetation on both sides of this windbreak, adjacent to the town beach’s boat landing, were removed earlier this month, leaving mulch, sand, and a lone bush. (Photo by Thomas Kilian)
The town’s conservation agent, Liz Allard, said the Conservation Commission will work with the Parks and Recreation Commission to replant around the windbreak, which was installed as part of a stormwater management system conceived in 2008 and implemented between 2010 and 2013 to protect Bare Hill Pond from pollutants at a time when its water quality was rapidly declining. (See sidebar below.) The windbreak keeps sand from accumulating on the pavement and blowing into a drainage area that was built around the same time as part of the system.
Parks and Rec assumed responsibility for maintaining the beach from the Select Board by vote of the June 2020 Town Meeting, which is why they are responsible for working with ConCom on a restoration plan.
“This was an act by the beach director to address safety issues,” O’Shea told the Press last week, distancing Parks and Rec from what he said was his decision to eliminate the vegetation. Despite the original order of conditions that specified regular maintenance for the plants around the windbreak, they had been neglected for the past several years. As a result, O’Shea said, the vegetation presented a three-pronged hazard to kids at the beach from thorny bushes, plants that attract bees, and tall grass that obscured lifeguards’ view of the boat landing.
Echoing longstanding complaints from Parks and Rec about the Department of Public Works’ insufficient care for athletic fields, O’Shea said he has been unsuccessful in persuading the DPW director, Tim Kilhart, to sign a memo of understanding, or MOU, for regularly tending to the beach. O’Shea offered praise, however, for the DPW workers who help with various tasks at the beach, most recently spreading new sand along the shore. Kilhart’s predecessor, he said, had agreed to the maintenance.
The DPW is “down two employees” and does not have the manpower to commit to landscaping at the beach, Kilhart told the Press. “The DPW has not signed any MOU since I have been here for over six years; I do not know what was agreed to or not prior to my arrival,” he said.
In voting against the $4,500 request, FinCom members declared the expense was neither unforeseen nor an emergency. “Why are we approving the money after [the work] is done?” asked Mike Derse, who said the work was more properly viewed as deferred maintenance.
“I don’t want to say ‘no’ but it doesn’t qualify,” said Chair Jennifer Finch, referring to the Reserve Fund requirement that transfers must be for “unforeseen” or “emergency” unbudgeted expenses. She thanked O’Shea for his hard work at the beach, and he in turn acknowledged to the committee that he “took a risk” with the decision to spend above this year’s landscaping maintenance budget of $2,500.
What to do?
Allard said Parks and Rec must either restore the plantings in compliance with the original order of conditions or file a new application with the Conservation Commission with the changes it wants. Honoring the order of conditions is meant to protect the wetlands in general and in this case, she said, to prevent damage to the pond and surrounding wetlands from stormwater. Allard urged anyone contemplating work in or near a wetland to contact her at Town Hall for guidance.
An initiative to lift Bare Hill Pond from its previous ‘endangered’ status
The windbreak is but one element in Harvard’s system of rain gardens, gravel wetlands, dry swales, grass channels, and sediment forebays that reduce pollution from runoff in the Bare Hill Pond watershed. It was installed between 2010 and 2013 with state and federal grant money in the area that drains into the Bare Hill Pond watershed around the schools, library, and Pond Road. The most prominent rain garden, or bioretention system, sits at the entrance to the Bromfield School.
Bill Johnson, a former member of the Bare Hill Pond Watershed Management Committee, describes the stormwater management system as “a critical component of the pond committee’s bold initiative in the early 2000s to reverse the declining health of the pond,” which was described in a 2008 assessment by environmental consultants Horsley Witten Group as increasingly polluted by nitrogen, bacteria, and phosphorus from stormwater runoff and surrounding septic systems and lawns. The pollutants, in turn, would eventually choke off oxygen in the water, creating dead zones and encouraging algae blooms.
As part of the cleanup initiative, the drawdown pumping system on Willow Road was built in 2007 with grant money and volunteer labor to control invasive aquatic weeds, which thrive on excessive phosphorus and nitrogen.
Together, the pumping station and stormwater system have “transformed Bare Hill Pond from one of the Top 10 endangered ponds in the state in 2012, to one of the healthiest, and are held as models for successful intervention,” Johnson said. But he offered this advice: “However, to continue protecting the pond, the numerous sediment collection and pollutant treatment sites must be diligently maintained on an annual basis. This has historically been a challenge for the town.”
—VH
