Williamstown Seeks Volunteers for Hiking Trail Maintenance
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Conservation Commission wants you.
The panel is looking for volunteers to attend a July 14 lesson on how to help maintain town-owned hiking trails.
At its June 23 meeting, hiking enthusiast and commission member Robert Hatton asked his colleagues to organize the session, scheduled for 6:30 at Town Hall in advance of the committee’s next regular meeting.
Hatton first announced his plan to generate a volunteer trail maintenance crew at a Board of Selectmen meeting on June 14.
A week later, he explained to his colleagues on the Conservation Commission why it is necessary to find new volunteer labor for continuing maintenance issues.
“I want someone when my joints get old, which is coming fast,” Hatton, 83, said in a meeting telecast on the town’s community access television station, WilliNet.
“Is it the Conservation Commission that has been maintaining these trails?” Commissioner Stephanie Boyd asked.
“No, I have,” Hatton replied.
Hatton said that to keep the trails operational, they must be checked for downed trees and limbs that need to be removed, and water drainage infrastructure has to be cleared of fallen leaves so it can operate properly and prevent erosion.
Commissioner Nicholas Wright asked if it made more sense to ask for help from established groups like the Williams College Outing Club rather than try to recruit new citizen volunteers. But Hatton argued that the kind of routine maintenance he has in mind is best done by regular users of the trails -- like himself - who take responsibility for spotting and removing problems.
“There’s nothing wrong with having work parties, but it’s a completely different idea than this,” Hatton said. “This means maintenance, a couple of times a summer. At least after the leaves come down in the fall is when the maintainer should go out either on their favorite trail or any of these trails I listed … come to Town Hall and write down the date they did it.
“I’m very familiar with work parties on Mount Greylock for the last 40 years. Work parties are for a particular problem, and you have a leader and everyone goes to the same problem area. … It’s a big project in one area. You get students, you get the Appalachian Mountain Club, you get the Boy Scouts, and everyone does a project and it’s all over.
“This is upkeep on a yearly basis, two or three times a year. The trails have to be taken care of.”
No prior registration is necessary for the July 14 organizational meeting.
In other business at its June 23 meeting, the Conservation Commission heard a report from Megan Meyers of Guntlow & Associates about the vegetative restoration project at Waubeeka Golf Links, where the commission issued an enforcement order in spring 2015.
Meyers, a wetlands scientist who devised the restoration plan in consultation with the commission, told the panel that she reviewed the plantings at the site, although she reminded the commissioners that it is too soon to make a final assessment of the project’s success.
“The site was just planted eight months ago, and usually this doesn’t get reviewed for two growing seasons,” Meyers said.
“I’m thinking, overall, after two growing seasons, it’s all going to be full. At that point, when you do a sampling or a plant inventory or a percentage of the canopy, if it’s not winterberry, it’s going to be something else covering that area and help shading [the Green River] and just keeping everything green over there.”
A couple of the commissioners pressed Meyers for details about Waubeeka’s planting program and whether the golf course used a contractor to do the work on the site.
“I think the prior [course] superintendent probably had it done by himself or his own work crew,” Meyers told the Con Comm.
That appeared to be a sticking point for a couple of the commissioners.
Boyd, noting that Meyers did not see evidence of robust winterberry growth on the site, said the absence of a third-party planter was problematic.
“That’s why I don’t feel comfortable that we can say, ‘Oh, it was in the order, so it’s in the ground,’ “ Boyd said. “They did it themselves, so there is no contractor to say, ‘We did it.’ There are things on the list that we haven’t seen. It looked much scantier than we expected.”
Wright likewise questioned whether the course did all of the plantings in the order.
“There are 130 plants here,” he said, referring to the order. “One hundred, thirty were planted … supposedly. Are these [nursery] prices right? Is that fair to ask?”
“It says it was paid,” Commissioner Richard Schlessinger said, referring to the documentation for the specimens purchased for planting.
“Are these prices reasonable for what was supplied?” Wright asked.
Schlessinger argued that the commission should be patient and wait until the plantings have a chance to develop before assessing Waubeeka’s compliance with the order.
“I’ve worked with trees a little more than some of the others,” Schlessinger said. “I know they’re a little scrawny when they start out. It takes a while before they look like something. But Nick’s worked with trees, too. He knows they look pretty scrawny when you stick them in the ground.
“We do have to be a little patient.”
Schlessinger noted that the order calls for full compliance after three years.
“That’s the criteria,” he said. “That’s what we’re waiting for. It’s kind of hard to know for sure right now if that’s going to happen.”
Wright and Boyd each responded that the commission should be more aggressive in monitoring progress at the site throughout the remaining two years.
“We can wait until three [years], but we might know at the end of one,” Wright said.
“I don’t see how we can know at the end of one,” Schlessinger said. “You won’t see what survives for three years. They might die this winter.”
Schlessinger, serving his last meeting as chairman, said he would leave it to his successor to decide whether to schedule more site visits for the commission to monitor progress at the site.
In the meantime, Meyers said she would consult with the course’s current superintendent about a program to water and nurture the plants in the ground and the possibility of installing seed mats to prevent erosion on the river bank.
