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there's film made possible by Merrimack County Savings Bank BCM environmental and land law PLLC and the Norwin s and elizabeth and beam foundation so it all started with the water it all started with the water and so the forest owes its existence to the Merrimack er all rivers rise and fall over the course of the day a season a year for the last century and a half many rivers have seen their health rise and fall as well the Merrimack is one of those rivers and it's stories seems to repeat itself every 50 years or so though in different ways do you think that people who are working here but I think they enjoy looking so what is the Merrimack River mean to you doesn't really mean much to me I don't remember the first time I encountered the Merrimack it's just always been there I was born in its watershed grew up playing in the lakes and streams that beat it and as an adult I am working to protect the land surrounding the river and it's tributaries did you know that actually even though this river seems like really nice to swimmin and pretty clear it's one of the most endangered rivers the danger what does that mean in the United States dangers nearly fifty years ago the Clean Water Act began the process that cleaned up America's rivers turning them from open sewers into places that support wildlife and people in countless ways but today the Merrimack is again on the verge of taking a step backward putting at risk those things previous generations worked so hard to protect maybe we don't think about the river as much as we once dad we're driving up 93 to get to the forest then we're crossing over the river on the way and not really thinking that much about it for the last few years I've been thinking about the Merrimac a lot and exploring the watershed and talking to people who think about it every day from River guides to water treatment managers to foresters this is my journey to understand why the Merrimack is at risk [Music] my journey begins in Franklin New Hampshire where the pema Joe wasa and Winnipesaukee rivers converge to form the Merrimack 117 miles later the River empties into the Gulf of Maine and the Atlantic Ocean on the North Shore of Massachusetts at five thousand square miles it is the fourth largest watershed in New England in the Merrimack watershed rivers such as the Kentucky sohey ghen Nashua and Concord in addition to many other streams and Brooks all drain into the Merrimack as it flows to the ocean to many the river might appear clean healthy and far from at risk but in 2016 the nonprofit American rivers using u.s. Forest Service data and projections ranked the Merrimack as one of the most endangered rivers in the u.s. due to increased levels of stormwater runoff and pollution it's not the first time the rivers health has been in jeopardy to learn more we need to go back more than a century to see if its history could provide some solutions to the problems it faces today [Music] so could you start by taking us back 100 years and kind of describing what we would see here instead of this kind of beautiful clear flowing river well a lot of days it probably looked just like this the differences are a couple one is that this was very much a working river this was an industrial river this is the birthplace the lower on the Merrimack is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in America Lowell and Lawrence and all of the the people with doing the textiles and all of those factories down there all of that meant that this was a serious working river all of that required power power required water that's why they aughts why all of these mills were on these rivers so they needed the power the power of the water the Merrimack River starts up in the pemuda wasit and in Lake Winnipesaukee Lake Winnipesaukee was owned by the mill owners down in Lawrence and law they manipulated the levels of this Lake daily to generate power down there so Wow it might not look that different than it does today if you were standing down closer to the river you would see it fluctuate dramatically from day to day from hour to hour with no notice whatsoever all of a sudden millions and millions of gallons could be rushing down geographically why was this place chosen even before the power it's actually mainly because the Merrimack River at this location had enough power to run more than 55 factors and the investors knew they could purchase the farmland from the farmers they had the power the canal had already been built so they had an idea of how to move that power right to the factories once the water okay is even on both sides of the gate okay the pressure is released and then they'll be able to open it by hand so you'll see that actually operating so what's interesting is that when you think about the textile business they came in 1821 oh we're able to look at the site calculate the power of the Merrimack River at this site hire an agent to come in and buy the land the water rights stop digging in 1822 stop building the mills by the fall of 1823 the Merrimack Mills which was the first mills started producing cloth so um today okay I'm going to tell you this is a beautiful river alright when I actually was born and bred here in Lowell and you didn't come down to the river alright the river was in a horrible State I remember as a kid there was good fish there was it was polluted there was actually you know law sewage coming through the system you did not go on the river if you fell in you probably go to the hospital get a tetanus shot okay I'm just saying it was one of the worst polluted rivers in doing what [Music] he had these mighty rivers that were being used for industrial purposes and they were being heavily heavily manipulated not only were they manipulated in their flow but all of the waste from all of those mills for all of the years really from that period a hundred and some years ago up until the 1950s and 60s all of that waste had to go somewhere and it went right here so as the cities began to develop all of their sewage began to get piped had to go somewhere about 150 years ago this became an open sewer really so while it might have looked ok at the surface they were probably times when it was pretty darn nasty especially after a rainstorm it would have been frothy with human waste Wow that's a visual so what was a major change in people's ideology that caused them to start caring about the Merrimack River well I think this really tracks back to the environmental awakening that happened kind of in the late 50s and 60s there was a lot of people looking at the river that was changing colors depending on whatever they happened to be dying at the mill that day and thinking maybe this isn't so good and the fact that people really couldn't swim in the river you know they they joked about the the eyeless brown trout which is just human waste so you know those are the jokes that we're about the river and I think people started identifying oh my goodness this maybe isn't good for me it's not good for my family the water there as a resource was also becoming more important for using in other kinds of industries you know how do we use this this resource in new ways as manufacturing starts to decline and our cities were going through urban renewal at the same time so all of that was making people really think differently about their neighborhoods about their river about their locale and certainly the first Earth Day and then the passage of the Clean Water Act has cemented that public sentiment into law and that's what we've now been in implementing since 1975 or so we've been into implementing the Clean Water Act and the goal of Clean Water Act is simple very simple all of the water in the state is gonna be fishable swimmable by 1982 we're not quite there but we're getting close we're not quite there not really really feeling we've cleaned up the river considerably in the last 50 years even if we still have work to do but why should we care that the river is at risk for more pollution an obvious answer may be to protect the wildlife and fish that call a river home but more than two and a half million people live within the Merrimack River watershed - how does the river impact their lives for one thing 600,000 people get their drinking water from the Merrimack and it's tributaries every day can you tell us a little bit about kind of Chuck we now serve Nashua as well as part of ten other communities in essence we serve over a hundred thousand people out of this facility our primary water supply for the panacek Water Works company is the Pentek Brook watershed and the panacek Brook eventually flows into the Merrimack River that's our primary source of supply our backup source of supply is the Merrimack River and that's a seasonal draw so how frequently do you have to drop I'm probably daily during during the spring summer and fall months so Phil where are we what room are we standing in a.m. we're in a pike gallery of our new renovated water treatment facility we provide water for about 160,000 residents a little over 10 percent of the state is serviced by the Manchester waterworks Wow John you're the Forester for the Manchester Water Works what is the connection between forests and in the watershed it really all began with the forests here the the Manchester waterworks started water treatment back in 1871 by buying up the land around Lake Massabesic and around all the streams tributaries and ponds and at that point they were cleared lands for agriculture mainly for sheep farming for the textile industry and they would buy land and plant trees as a filter to filter the water the rainwater that made it into Lake Massabesic for the drinking water source so the trees were really that first filter that's really the original water treatment that was done for drinking water and so they started managing the lands back in the 1870s or purchasing land and then converting them to forest land and then managing that forest and and for healthy forests and and our motto is healthy forests equal clean water so Massabesic at its 24,000 acres or 42 square mile watershed is a sub watershed of the greater Merrimack River watershed and it's really rainfall that replenishes it well do you anticipate needing to find another source at some point for drinking water in Manchester it has been part of our long-term vision at the Manchester waterworks to look at other sources as a as a backup whether it be for times of drought but also just you know if there was ever anything that happened here that contaminated the water supply to have another source we've been working over on the Merrimack River and we actually put a well in on the Merrimack River and that's going to be basically a backup or a complementary source to Massabesic should should we be worried about our drinking water resources here in the state it's always I've always turned on the faucet I've always gotten water to come out it's a vital resource it's the source of life when we look at what we do we actually provide a product that is essential to life so should you be concerned yes because it's not just about how much water you have what's the quality of the water are you protecting it as a long-term asset from Concord to Lowell to Newburyport every day people rely on the Merrimack for clean drinking water how else does a clean River benefit people that live and work in the watershed as it is done for more than a century the River continues to be an economic engine for communities large and small we're not meaning a fracturing cloth in lowland water but the waterways are used for power today they are and so explain the ways they're used for power today so today these waterways we have five point six miles of canals they're actually feeding into a hydroelectric plant they're also feeding into water turbines that are located in the basement of some of the mills here in Lowell and those water turbines that at one time was powering machinery today is actually generating electricity that goes on to the National [Music] pretty big place here that it is yeah we're just under 500,000 square feet run one can line three bottle lines 24/7 yeah and how many employees do you all hear a little seasonal but in the summer we're about 130 in the offseason we're about 110 what's being produced out on the floor today right now we're running but Moxie on the can line is running today Menem a lemonade and a variety of other flavors on the on the two-liter and then one later ginger ale and 20 ounce fuse tea oh yeah we saw that as we were out there kind of walking around it it was pretty amazing for me to see I mean how much goes into this I kind of expect there to be a lot of there a lot of process but it's it's a pretty amazing facility what I'm realizing though is the main ingredient here isn't necessarily the secret you know coca-cola recipe its water Dru yep so where do you get your water from the water is definitely our biggest ingredient our water right now comes from Lake Massabesic via Manchester waterworks and like I said it's the biggest ingredient we have here it's also one of the most protected that we have how reliable is the water in terms of like seasonality and in the quality of the water in general over the 12 months out of the year it's it's it's great quality water how much water do you get in every everyday it varies typically to run four lines or the volume that we need to run it's in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand gallons per day through our water treatment system could range up to 150 thousand on a big day that's more Dasani and that output what does that look like how much stuff are you sending out of here a day if you're yeah productize yeah we send about a hundred thousand cases a day [Music] how have you seen the business change definitely the the trends of things that people are interested in hiring practices the types of benefits that you need to offer to attract people those have all changed a lot over time while we're on the topic of benefits I think one of the neat things about being able to work here is that because we are near the river we have access we put during a renovation we put a dock on the turkey River which feeds just behind our building it feeds right into the Merrimack so you can on your lunch break you can paddle around or you can paddle the work sometimes we have paddles workdays which a lot of fun and you can really enjoy the natural beauty that we have and I think it's so easily forgotten that the Merrimack cuts through the heart of Concord and is such a beautiful resource absolutely explain a little bit more about the boat to work date so we go it's about five and a half miles upriver we rent the the boats for people some people bring their own but we do offer to rent them for people who don't have them and then we just kind of paddle downriver and it's about an hour or 15 minutes or so we take our time we go past the Capitol dome and see some wildlife you can almost always count on seeing a blue heron or something like that and it's just a lot of fun it's a cool way to arrive to work I wish I could do it every day yeah that's that's really neat so our towns and cities rely on a healthy watershed for drinking water and economic reasons after hearing about Amanda's paddle to work day it made me wonder is recreation an important resource so what we're all about is creating community through conservation and we do that in a variety of ways it might be through creating trail access or trail connectivity we do it through environmental education can you describe to me what we're standing on right here sure this is the Concord River Greenway and we're just upriver from the from Jolin Dubner Park and you're looking at a historic stone arch bridge cool so the Concord River Greenway it's a pretty critical link in the city's trail network and actually the region's trail network is it relatively easy for people to access these green areas or the river how far do people generally have to travel from their home or from where they work to get to a place the city is fortunate to have over 90 parks in generally speaking you want to think about trying to make every park walkable which means you need to be able to get there by not walking more than a quarter of a mile and you also go down the river you ra
t the river every spring we do we the we're really fortunate in the on the Concord here that we have class three and for our whitewater it's also a really unique run and that the rapids are a boom boom boom there's not a lot of downtime in between so it's a pretty people don't expect it in the middle of a city so when you're paddling or rafting down the river what do you see really abundant wildlife you see this green corridor and people don't know you're not up against buildings until you get downtown and then we it's kind of like the Grand Canyon or the Red Canyon do you end up going through these high walls yeah the high historic brick walls when the river was channelized but up here you go through this wonderful green quarter that people don't expect so it's just it's just beautiful [Music] further changes have you seen along the river in your 22 years of working along its banks probably more use we now have pontoon boats and fishing boats that go up the river of course all the paddlers but not just paddle is from here but people putting their own boats on people swimming people tubing so in the last we've been here 25 years so in the last 15 years we've seen a steady increase in just people using the river enjoying the beaches enjoying the scenery enjoying the hiking trails and then swimming after hiking the trails it's so just river usage is just it's grown from adequate [Music] the Merrimack in this neck of the woods is pretty big water it is tidally influenced up up this far and you know it's uh it's quite a bit different than the upper reaches and you answer so it's a it's a spot that is super important for a variety of recreational uses lots of fishing lots of boating but it's it's big water so aside from recreational uses what other ways do people use the river down here it's an important source of drinking water first for some communities but it's it's important as a as a scenic resource it's important for communities that have redeveloped their downtown's places that have had their backs turned to the river for generations are building River walks and Wharf on trails and again it's that intersection of economic development recreational use and it's all predicated upon having a clean healthy River [Music] yeah as Chris just said economic development and recreation are predicated upon having a clean healthy river up to this point in my journey the river and its tributaries appear to be nothing but clean we use it for drinking water recreation and running businesses so can a river with this much to offer be at risk the Industrial Revolution has gone elsewhere most of the manufacturing that happens here well a lot of it is still done on the Merrimack River you know the redevelopment of the mills and in Manchester and in Nashua and Lawrence and Lowell it's no longer as messy they don't use the river as their their open sewer and that's the other big change is that we now have plumbing and that plumbing goes to a wastewater treatment plant we have a wastewater treatment plant that does amazing amazing work to take that human waste and turn it into really clean water in fact sometimes I hear some of the waste water treatment plant operators complain when they look at the stringent requirements placed upon them they say do you understand it's your River that's making my waist dirty so there there are pumping out lots of really clean water it's high-tech and we have some of the best operators of these wastewater treatment plants anywhere in the country they win awards all in the Merrimack watershed there are 46 plants that do a great job most of the time of the 46 plants six of them - in New Hampshire and four in Massachusetts struggle to treat the large volume of raw sewage combined with storm runoff that inundates their aging infrastructure during heavy rain events to avoid having sewage back up into homes and businesses the plants discharged where they can't eat into the river and what is called a combined sewer overflow or CSO every year upwards of three-quarters of a billion gallons of raw sewage is discharged into the Merrimack during CSO events when a CSO happens bacteria such as e.coli can remain in the river for up to 48 to 72 hours threatening the health of people wildlife and even our pets and climate change is causing more frequent CSO events so on some days the river is cleaner than others one of the predictions of climate change and I think that most people would say it's already here is that we're getting more of our precipitation in fewer events so we're getting more and more of that the big rainstorms that really devastating rainstorms the kinds of things that break dams and devour the river the banks of the river those are happening more frequently and with that rain with those intense rainstorms comes more pollution off the land [Music] with an increase in intense rains and storm runoff we will see an increase in CSOs eliminating CSOs completely will cost me this apologies hundreds of millions of dollars to update their infrastructure here's the thing even if we spend millions of dollars to put an end to CSOs the Merrimack watershed faces a bigger challenge that even our water treatment plants would not be able to face keeping sewage out of the river is part of the solution but it won't clean it up completely so if this is the case what is the biggest challenge the river faces in the future and what are our biggest threats to water quality surface waters for the state by far the largest threat today of surface water quality is stormwater runoff so stormwater runoff is the water that reaches paved surfaces some of it Tom Stephen Grabill surfaces and our lawns included in that and it reaches that the rain falls and it washes off whatever stuff happens to be on those surfaces so on our roads there's you know little bits of your tires there's little bits of your breaks out of your car there's all the just grime there's their atmospheric deposition coming down so we have sulfides and nitrates that are falling from the grant from from the air that come from other places we have mercury that comes from the burning of fossil fuels that falls on our surfaces and washes into our waters so all of those things contribute to us having poor water quality as a result of some of that storm water runoff stormwater runoff is a form of non point source pollution as rainfall and snowmelt move over and through the ground it carries sediment from improperly managed construction sites animal waste and pesticides from farms petroleum products and salts from roads toxic chemicals from manufacturing sites and fertilizer and bacteria from our homes and yards before wastewater treatment plants existed forests were the only resource communities could rely on to filter runoff forests hold back natural and human-made pollutants from contaminating water sources including lakes rivers and groundwater unlike a forest an impervious surface such as a paved parking lot can't keep pollutants from spilling into a storm drain and ultimately the river the rainwater that falls in the watershed say on a mountainside in Franconia Notch or farm and Penacook or on i-93 in lawrence all effects the Merrimack in some way salt is a huge issue so the way we're salting our roads and the demand that we have as our god-given right as Americans to get to Walmart on the absolute worst conditions possible maybe we should rethink that a little bit maybe we can drive a little slower when it's winter those are some of the things that we have to think about because we have water bodies that are literally toxic with salt in this state it's gotten deep in the groundwater it's slowly seeping out and those waters no longer support fish probably the two biggest threats that I see to drinking water is developments whether it be commercial or residential developments and eroding in roadways and they usually come hand-in-hand and what you get with and a lot of that is nutrients loading into the the the Brooks and streams and eventually into the lake and those nutrients will feed algae and plant life and you'll get an imbalance of too much plant life in your in your lake and it'll become like a marsh and so being shallow Massabesic is vulnerable to becoming a marsh [Music] history has a way of repeating itself in the Merrimack watershed as this is not the first time the river has faced runoff issues 120 years ago when the lower Merrimack was the backbone of America's burgeoning industrial revolution the forests in the upper watershed were facing threats that would ultimately change the outlook of Eastern forests forever New Hampshire has such a diverse landscape we've seen developed areas and the southern part of the state and now we're here in the middle of the forest how we're all these places connected that's a great question I mean forests ultimately have a close relationship with the history of the Merrimack River and the especially the upper pema gelasa River because if not for the river the force would not have been saved in the first place we're walking through a floodplain forests along the edge of the river that's the central artery of New Hampshire but if you look into the history you realize that the river gave rise to what's now our national forests so you have to go back to the turn of the century and understand that logging in the White Mountains and the subsequent fires from clear cuts led to erosion and that affected the river in really profound ways through the removal of the tree canopy and the baking of the soil and then heavy rains and erosion resulted in siltation of the river and that changed the hydrology of the Merrimack River and in fact there was a series of devastating fires in the White Mountains in the 1880s and 1890s and then the worst year was 1903 [Music] there was a series of devastating floods that actually shut down the largest textile mill in the world the Amoskeag manufacturing in Manchester New Hampshire and 10,000 workers were laid off in the mill was closed for two months and so the river is behaving erratically there is floods in the spring there's droughts in the summertime and they didn't have a reliable source of water and then when it started becoming unpredictable people started scratching their heads and jobs are being lost and drops you're being live yeah those were being shut down people got together to protect the power of the river for economic interest for Commerce for their livelihoods and as a result they set aside that land in the headwaters that is now one of 40 eastern National Forest that traces its origins to the struggle to protect the water power for New England so when the White Mountain National Forest burned to the ground it still had seeds in the soil the forest was able to regrow but what you're saying is that this threat is insidious in nature because the human impacts that we are having along the river are a little bit more permanent I think so and you know it would seem that the forest was devastated by the logging and the fires in the erosion and the forest was certainly fragile when was also incredibly resilient I think our predecessors would be amazed to see this you know cloak of forest land on seven hundred and ninety thousand acres that's all public land that's owned by the u.s. Forest Service it's a you know a gem of northern New Hampshire and that impact on the river is keeping that water clean and cold and predictable in terms of the way that the force releases water into the watershed but in the southern part of the state you know that's not the case the lands and the communities around the mayor are not like the lands of the White Mountain National Forest and so the the lands in the southern part of the watershed are changing permanently even as we've got this victory we protected the headlines the loss of an acre of forest wouldn't cause irreparable harm to the watershed but the cumulative impact of these losses over many years paints a concerning picture by 2030 the u.s. Forest Service projects that the Merrimack watershed will lose more forested acres than any other watershed in the country between 1990 and 2010 approximately 100,000 acres of forests in the watershed where we place with roads parking lots and rooftops and by 2030 the amount of land projected to change from rural and character to urban or suburban could surpass 400,000 acres this rise in housing density puts the watershed at risk for more runoff which threatens water quality and the health of people and wildlife [Music] one notable change in the lower Merrimack is the loss of some of New England's oldest farmland to development although agriculture produces some non point source pollution in the form of animal waste and fertilizers farms in this part of the watershed have some of the most fertile soils in the region contributing greatly to our local food economy does losing farmland affect the river in the same way that losing our forests does [Music] the Merrimack Valley has a tremendous number of farms that are still in existence in fact some of the oldest longest continuously operating farms in the country are right here in the Merrimack Valley which is really a neat aspect of here and one of the things that we really want to try to help preserve it's very much part and parcel of the history here the culture the majority of that land is not preserved and is very threatened it's flat it's open it's easily developable a lot of these farmers don't have successors so let me see if I get this that's right you're just trying to keep farmland in operation and you want to ensure that it's it's always that it stays that way what's the alternative what would the alternative look like the alternative if preservation isn't a part of the picture is development and you see that happening over and over every landowner I talk with who has more than ten acres is getting phone calls from developers asking them if they want to sell their land farmers love their land lots of people love their land but farmers especially and the farmers that I work with this is family land this is land that has been in their name for generations and it's it's not only their livelihood it's who they are and they don't want to develop it and they want to see it stay in farming and I think having active productive farms is key to protecting the river as well I mean I know that you know there's concern about runoff from farmland polluting the rivers but I think a healthy sustainable farm can be much healthier for the river than then subdivision a lot of the farms of the Merrimack River Valley have a tremendous amount of forest land that they keep intact because they use these for us these are active productive forests they have mills on their property they hardly harvest timber they sell would they sell firewood that's sort of an accessory use to their farm these farms also protects significant amount of Woodlands which also plays a huge role in protecting water quality being water around [Music] in Merrimack Belknap and Hillsboro counties the three biggest counties in the New Hampshire portion of the watershed the rate of population growth is nearly two times greater the average businesses are thriving in the region and people want to live where there's access to natural resources like lakes rivers and forests if this region wants to continue to thrive in the future don't we need some development so the watershed is actually quite for us and still still intact right now we have about 17 to 18 percent of the watershed is developed what does that mean like so it means those houses parking lots are correct correct cities you know Nashua and Manchester and Lowell and Lawrence you know that developed area where the concentration of people is the highest but if you come back out into the water ship the water ship is much larger than the river itself you're dealing with an area there's largely forest development due to the increased transportation I 93 is being opened up being enlarged people can get further and further up and away from the cities to for their living and that's resulting in more and more fragmentation of the forests and we're seeing that throughout the watershed what is your projection or what do you see happening for development in the Merrimack Valley I think I think they'll
be steady growth I think the southern part of the state I think you're going to see those communities that are actively engaged in economic development are going to thrive and you're going to see smaller towns start to thin out and die out we're seeing an extremely low vacancy rate for rental units and a very high demand which drives up cost so people are paying a lot of money for rental units and in the housing market so for people trying to buy a home right now there's not a lot available in the lower price range when you think about jobs in New Hampshire we need people to fill those jobs and to keep up with the economic growth that New Hampshire has seen we have one of the lowest unemployment rates so for businesses to thrive in New Hampshire if they want to grow they need to find people to work here and so if people are having a hard time and a challenge with housing which is it goes hand in hand with working they're not going to be able to come here and so businesses aren't going to be able to grow and it's going to create a slowed a slow to convey in New Hampshire eventually more than just the SOS a non point source pollution are threatening the watershed cancer-causing toxins known as pee fasts and PFOA s have been found in drinking water sources hydroelectric dams block the passage of an address fish including salmon and shag and micro plastics are harming human and wildlife populations in profound ways it can be overwhelming but as history is shown the Merrimack watershed has faced challenges that it has overcome before the big question moving forward is how can we protect the river the most important thing that we can do to really start to understand our resource is to go touch it they should come down they should look at it they should get in it because then they'll care about it when you're out talking to people maybe not in this area but where they're comfortable in schools or elsewhere do you find that they they get it do they care about the water here I oh I believe they do I believe they do I mean the the people that you know water is becoming more and more of a concern for the public with different challenges that have come forward things like PFOA s that have been coming up in the newspaper water getting contaminated people understand that we need water for life you know that we can't exist without water assuming that there's going to be additional development here in the Merrimack Valley how should that look star would the use recognizing that the Merrimack River itself is a tremendous asset to attract families to attract businesses to come here because it adds to that quality of life recreationally scenically everything else I think one of the key challenges is making sure that there's some continuity between communities it won't do won't do any good in the long run if Concord protects its part of the river but then we found out Hooksett didn't the river is more than just one community the valley is larger than just Concord so I think there needs to be a regional approach to how we plan the future of all development and I think there'll be a lot of differing voices from people who want to protect the river and keep it completely undeveloped to developers who would like to line it with condominiums there's a balance the decision-making should err on the side of caution so hands down if you look across all the literature the best possible thing you can do is to have a buffer the bigger the buffer the better so about a hundred foot buffer will help to protect water quality to a significant extent so really that hunt that first hundred feet is really critical for water quality and what happens in that hundred feet nature nature happens but really what happens is that you have all of the activity of the vegetation you have the microbial activity in the soil you have the trees that are intercepting the rain with all of its pollution that's in the rain and the snow that's all being intercepted it's all being used up and recycled and so all of that's happening in in the light on the land next to the water that's protecting water quality if you really want to protect for wildlife then you need to go further if you really want to protect for things that are you know migratory species you need a bigger buffer if you really want to make sure that you have unfragmented for us that is forest for things that need a lot of habitat things like bears and some of the big Raptors that some of that kind of stuff then you need even bigger areas so depending on what it is that you love about that River I happen to love the fact that river otters come here in the winter I love that I love the fact that there's bald eagles that fly around here you don't have the river otters you don't have the bald eagles unless you have conserved land you don't have good water quality unless you have conserve land so it's really cute there's fish flopping around in the river oh yeah you don't have any of that you don't have that unless we have conservation land because that's really the filters that's that's the filters that keep this water clean so we're indebted to all of the wonderful people who have come before us who tried to protect the land along these rivers if that had not happened if we had development right up to the to the to the river itself we would have way worse water quality we would not be able to love these resources the way we do so it's really important that we keep what remain in green space we have as well as it's important for wildlife perspective and from a water quality perspective to tie all of these these conservation areas together so that they're not just you know islands in amongst pavement that we have nice contiguous areas of green to be able to both recreation as well as to protect both our wildlife and our water quality so I think conservation plays an incredibly important role in all of this for society is the coordinator of the conservation partnership and that is a group of organizations agencies and Regional Planning Commission's that came together about coming up on about ten years ago and this is the Merrimack conservation partnership correct thirty-three organizations including agencies state agencies from both mass and New Hampshire conservation groups from both mass in New Hampshire and then also Regional Planning Commission's all working towards a common goal of improving water quality in the Merrimack River what are the partners within the partnership doing right now to protect some of this land so the partners really are in a Wayne conservation mode much of the work has been done to develop the conservation plan that identifies the most critical lands that would if conserved would protect the water quality on the road and the last I would say ten years we've been really working on implementing that plan conserving those areas that that have been previously identified as the most important to protect so what if New Hampshire doesn't make way or doesn't make it more accessible for people to live here what happens well I think the economy will certainly will feel that we won't be able to continue thriving so I think it's important to cater to everybody so we can continue having a great place to live and having the services that the aging population needs but also making it a great place for the younger generation to live and to want to live and to afford to live and so what are some solutions and maybe some sustainable solutions to that in the city center so when we're thinking about Nashua Manchester Concord even we have to be creative and think about creative solutions which is already happening when we go out into a little more rural areas we need to look at the land use regulations and see if they're supporting more cluster development more dense development if we can get smaller Lots smaller homes more people on less land I think that is what is going to help not only with hopefully some affordability but also lessen the impact of having to have two acres for one home and some communities are doing really well with that and others I think need to catch up a little bit and I think we can learn from each other and and try to be better and support each other through change and I think we need to evolve and think dynamically [Music] way back from the rivers really heavily polluted you could obviously see pollutants flowing into them the river was a different color we were talking about how you know clear though how obvious that was it was also probably really really expensive I would assume that if you're able to conserve forests you know higher in the watershed that maybe the cost isn't as great in trying to clean up a river that is polluted if you can kind of get ahead of that and just ensure the water is clean right the key to that is as you say if you conserve higher in the watershed that water already coming down through the watershed is clean you know the communities that are having to drink from that water are having to treat it less or having to in some cases are still drinking surface water that is coming into the river but the facilities that are needed to be built can be avoided if it's not as fluid as it comes down businesses that are along the river you know they're not having to have treated heavily treated water you're having communities that want to have attractive places to go want to have River sidewalks if you have a polluted river there's not going to be the attractiveness for people to either live next to it recreative that drives an economy here in the lower part of the watershed that is very important clean water filters into more than just the drinking water filters into the economy and a whole bunch of ways and the livelihood of everybody who's with proper planning forests are the best resource the developing Merrimack region from harness to filter our air and water offer recreation and economic opportunities maintain stable wildlife habitat and combat climate change maintaining healthy forests is the most important action we can take to turn a river that's at risk into a river that was at risk today's business leaders and conservation interest should be working together about what this watershed is gonna look like 100 years from now so what can the landscape the natural landscape do for the health of the river that we as humans if we can let it do its thing as a watershed it will continue to filter water and provide habitat for wildlife and protect the water quality so that we can continue to fish and boat and drink and use the Merrimack River you know is the economic lifeblood of our communities if we act now can the Merrimack continue to sustain us can we save it let's call this real friends let's call this real friends let's call this I won't be frightened to let you light in and call this school let's call this love to love to come [Music] so it'll be frightened [Music] I'm [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Jenny's [Music] so started beginning what do you mean swimming around well there was garbage in the water and not only garbage other stuff Julia but even one inventions but used to kick hard and swim hard swish it around so that it wouldn't be right in front of you I'm the third generation on this one I'm the fourth generation is very active the fifth generation their farm in many many acres with a pocket 1100 acres we barb you know always they'll tell you the land a lot about back rivets the best plan to be far what's nice about kayak fishing is I like to see it makes you a more more intimate with your fishing you're not sitting up on a boat it's not sitting in a boat it's quiet there's no motor talk about seeing a lot of wildlife hmm oh look at the colors thank you fish well we're standing in what we call the DM of the Dean and main building and what's behind us is the flywheel from that pump I was built in 1900 and ran up until about 1975 and it would pump about seven million gallons a day into the distribution system and in city nashua yes I think it's different priority to increase access for recreation to all of our waterways but the city in some places turns its back to the river and so we want we want the city we're facing the river gotta increase visual access physical access to the rivers when we first started doing this a lot of people the classic question is how's the water I heard you can't even dip your big toe in it you'll get sick there's industrial waste and dyes from fabric in it that all went the way of the dinosaur after the Clean Water Act in 1975 and I used to call them the elephant's of water quality big giant pipes you can see them you can go after them pretty readily it's it's kind of easy to concentrate your resources on something big but now that those have been taken away we're kind of dealing with what I call the ants of water quality whereas [Music] Oh kiss y'all never read Tonya Jeannie's wish and [Music]
