Cheshire, BRPC Preparing Hazard Mitigation and Municipal Vulnerability Plan
CHESHIRE, Mass. — The town and Berkshire Regional Planning Commission held an information session last week about its new hazard mitigation and municipal vulnerability preparedness plan.
Courtney Morehouse, environmental and energy program senior planner for the BRPC, said the new plan should help Cheshire deal with potential environmental and other hazards in the future. She said it could also make Cheshire eligible for various hazard-related grant opportunities from the federal government.
"A lot of times the different grants you go for will ask, 'Do you have an up-to-date hazard mitigation plan?' And when you go through this process, you can say, 'Yes, we do. And this action was identified in that hazard mitigation plan,'" she said.
Morehouse said the need to act on climate change is another benefit of the hazard mitigation plan. She explained storms have been increasing in severity and length in recent years because of changes in climate.
"We have recorded a 2.9 degrees rise in temperature statewide [since 1895], which has also increased our growing days and our precipitation because there's more water in the system and it's causing more floods," she said. "Warmer weather also means that we typically have a more conducive environment to invasives and pests."
Morehouse specifically pointed to last summer as an example of increasing weather-related hazards that are already impacting municipalities.
"2021, as we all saw, was quite a bit of rain, much more rain in the summer than we're used to," she said. "And a lot of towns in the Berkshires saw the effects of that on their infrastructure and culverts and streams."
Beaver activity throughout the town was one area of concern brought up by Morehouse and residents at the session. Highway Superintendent Robert Navin said it is something the town is monitoring.
"There's still activity there that we'll be dealing with in the near future. We've got to get them out of there," he said. There's no other solution at this time. We're just monitoring it, making sure that they're not building in front of the culvert right now because it did overflow the road once about a month and a half ago."
Morehouse said BRPC is holding a workshop for the municipal vulnerability preparedness part of the plan in June, when town officials, employees and members of boards will be able to provide feedback.
"They all come to the table and basically define what the different hazards are. Some of that work is being done now," Morehouse said. "And then they, more importantly, come up with the action steps and those get prioritized and reprioritized and reprioritized until you have a really narrow list that you can go to either the state or to FEMA and say 'These are our top priorities, here's the actions you want to take in order to reduce our risk of all-around hazards.'"
Additionally, there will be another information session and public comment in July. BRPC expects the finalized mitigation plan to be adopted by the town in September.
Tags: hazard mitigation,
