Hingham’s Foundry Pond Dam: Remove or Repair?
Wednesday, April 9 at 7 PM
Hingham Public Library
The Hingham Land Conservation Trust presents the case for restoring the Weir River inter-tidal area by removing the dam at Foundry Pond. This project would improve water quality and increase spawning areas for Rainbow Smelt, River Herring, and the American Eel. The following Speakers will make presentations:
Abby Piersall, ACIP, is the Conservation Officer for the town of Hingham since 2012. She will review recent Hingham Conservation Commission discussions concerning the Foundry Pond Dam issues and proposed solutions.
Nick Wildman has a decade of professional environmental experience working on wetland and river restoration projects in NJ, CT, and MA. At the Commonwealth’s Department of Ecological Restoration, he has completed six dam removals. Nick’s presentation will provide an overview of dam removal in Massachusetts today including technical, regulatory, and funding elements. He will draw on his experience on other dam removals to draw informative parallels to the Foundry Pond Dam in Hingham.
Alex Mansfield is the Ecology Program Director for the non-profit Jones River Watershed Association in Kingston, MA and is a Principal Research Scientist for the non-profit Battelle Memorial Institute. For 18 years Alex has been designing and conducting environmental field programs from the tropics to the arctic. Since 2007 Alex has created a program that focuses on local environmental restoration projects. These include river species monitoring, dam removal projects, and salt marsh assessments.
Presentation: “Removal of Wapping Road Dam Brings Life Back to the Jones River”. The Wapping Road Dam was a concrete wall that blocked migrating fish for over 100 years. The Jones River Watershed Association and partners removed the dam in 2011. This presentation describes the project including public outreach, partnership building, funding, land issues, engineering, permitting, deconstruction, restoration, and monitoring.
