Canoe dock at Riverbend — members use our boats for free!

Join us this Sunday, May 19th for the Annual Winthrop Street to Riverbend paddle trip and the Dock Opening Celebration. From our stretch of river you can see turtles, cardinal flowers, silver maples, and perhaps even a river otter. Canoes will be available for paddling what many people say is the most beautiful section of the river. Celebrate the river together, enjoy DownRiver Ice Cream, go for a paddle and NEW this year: tour our new property. It doesn’t get much better than that!

RSVP to cingelfinger@ipswichriver.org or call 978-412-8200

Peabody St Landing, Mothers’ Day Flood, 2006. This flood broke all records for the Ipswich River. J. Schneider photo

The Water Closet, May 17, 2013

Since mid-March this year, the start of spring, we’ve had fewer than three inches of rain. The Ipswich River is a couple feet lower than usual for mid-May. This Mother’s Day in the Closet, after finally receiving some much needed and welcome rain after six weeks of very little, we hearken back to the record Ipswich River flood on Mothers Day, 2006. Here is the Water Closet published in the Tri-Town Transcript the week after the great flood that swept two people to their deaths. Especially note the amount of precipitation in just 23 days of that May.

PRECIPITATION (5/26/06)

Precipitation Data for Mo. of      Feb.     Mar.     Apr.     May

30 Yr. Normal (1971-2000)       3.22     3.88     4.17     3.63

2006 Central Watershed Actual    2.59     0.72     2.49     17.07 (thru 5/23)

IPSWICH RIVER FLOW RATE (5/26/06)

Ipswich River Flow Rate (S. Middleton USGS gage) in Cubic Feet per Second (CFS)

For May 24, 2006: Normal… 53.5 CFS   Current Rate … 367 CFS (at crest 1330)

ONE WEEK’S WATER, The Water Closet, May 26, 2006 
At April’s end, after almost three months of drought, the Ipswich River and its tributaries were feeling down. Light snows and rains had been few and far between; water tables were down; vernal pools were dangerously low for wood frog and salamander tadpoles. Spring rains finally came on May 2^nd and 3^rd providing the Tri-Town area with 1 1/2 inches of water, enough to dampen the dry topsoil. On Tuesday May 9^th dark clouds brought more. Vast swirling, water laden, air masses stalled over us and cold winds off the ocean kept us in periods of drizzle alternating with heavy rain. By Wednesday morning 2 inches had fallen. Thursday was damp and cool; the new May leaves shed water on to wet soil. Friday evening the rain resumed in earnest and left another inch over night. Saturday it intensified. On Sunday morning the Closet rain gauge showed another 5 inches. Sometime Saturday the water table reached the soil surface; saturated, it could hold no more. Additional rain then flowed parallel with ground, “runoff” as from imperious manmade surfaces, to low areas. These quickly filled and overflowed to fill our streams and river. More and more fell on Sunday. By early Monday, about 14 inches had fallen since the previous Tuesday.

All our water bodies were now filled or overflowing. Their ultimate collector here, the Ipswich River, was a quarter mile wide in places and flowing fast. Monday evening it crested at the south Middleton United States Geological Survey gauge where it had risen 7 1/2 feet in just one week, reaching a new high of 8 1/2 feet since regular recording began in 1938. Eight miles down river at Thunder Bridge, just up from the Boxford/Middleton line, water flowing over a 200 yard wide front across East Street reached the second bridge rail, 1 ½ feet higher than the previous record flood on March 23, 2001. Our river and streams, usually scarce seen within their lush vegetation, had once again risen up and were giving notice. We strip the living land of water-absorbing plants and soils at our peril.

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WATER RESOURCE AND CONSERVATION INFORMATION

FOR MIDDLETON, BOXFORD AND TOPSFIELD

Ipswich River Flow Rate (S. Middleton USGS Gage) in Cubic Feet per Second (CFS):

For May 14, 2013: Normal . . . 67 CFS           Current Rate . . . Unavailable**

*Danvers Water Filtration Plant, Lake Street, Middleton is the source for actual precipitation data thru April. Normals data is from the National Climatic Data Center.

** A beaver dam a quarter mile downstream from the USGS Gage has been causing invalid, thus unreleased gage reports.

*** Updated May precipitation data is from MST gage

THE WATER CLOSET is provided by the Middleton Stream Team: www.middletonstreamteam.org or <MSTMiddletonMA@gmail.com> or (978) 777-4584

Volunteer to help with our beautiful rain gardens and learn about river friendly gardening! Photo: Denise King

Do you have a green thumb? A fondness for digging in the dirt?  A hankering to garden? A desire to make a difference?  A love of the Ipswich River? Join us for a Garden Clean Up session on Friday, May 17, at Ipswich River Watershed Association, 143 County Rd (aka Route 1A) in Ipswich. We could use your help tending native plant and rain gardens.

We start at 8:30 (but you are welcome to join in whenever your schedule allows) and wrap up by 10:30.  Feel free to bring a friend and your favorite weeding tools. Let us know by email or calling 978-412-8200 if you can help, either on the 17th or another, more convenient, time?

We are looking for a few gardening enthusiasts to maintain these beds during the growing season (April – October).  As you work with our head volunteer gardener Denise King (an accredited land care professional), learn about no-water gardening methods and using native plants in the garden and landscape, and about the birds, butterflies, and other wildlife they attract. Volunteering for the Ipswich River Watershed Association is a great way to make a difference, learn new skills, make new friends and have fun together in the great outdoors. Many hands make light work. Thanks, in advance, for your help.

This man made cut in a large beaver dam caused the long flooded wildlife habitats above it to drastically change. Stream Team photo

The Water Closet, May 10, 2013

CORRECTION – This week’s WC implies that the breaching of the beaver dam was legal without a permit from the town. It is NOT legal to breach a beaver dam without such a permit. 

In late March a properly licensed trapper cut two 2-ft. wide 2 ½-ft. deep notches in a 170-ft. long beaver dam in the northern tip of Middleton. This dam and the rich wildlife habitat it produced are often featured here in the Water Closet. The trapper set two traps, legal by human law, near these breaches. He did this with the permission of one of two landowners whose land was affected by the dam and resulting impoundment. Beaver trappers are allowed to trap beavers without a Board of Health permit from November 1 to April 15 if they have a written permit from the landowner on whose property the traps are set. The breaches quickly did enormous damage to one of our favorite places in the Ipswich River watershed. At this critical time of the year for wildlife, about one hundred acres were soon without near as much water as the beavers there and we spectators have enjoyed for fourteen years since beavers built the dam in 1999. Other than licensed trappers, the rest of us humans in Massachusetts need to apply to the town Board of Health (BOH) for a permit to counteract the effects of beaver flooding by trapping them or breaching their dams. A permit may be issued by the BOH for reasons of public health and/or safety. Neither public safety nor public health were issues in this case. There are no roads, septic systems, or cellars to be flooded nearby. The trapper wanted the money he could obtain by selling a few pelts.

The breaches allowed very roughly seven million cubic feet of water to leave the vast impoundment around Pond Meadow Pond and drain into Pond Meadow Brook which took it to Boston Brook and eventually the Ipswich River. The loss changed much of the shallow lake into a place of wide muddy beaches and flats strewn with tree trunks that had fallen and were partially pickled over past decades. Zero to three feet deep impoundment water and mud are somewhat acidic and low in oxygen, hence the preservation. In the draining, much of the impounded area went from 2 ½ feet deep to exposed bottom. In a few biologically active early spring days, rich habitat was greatly changed.

The most noticeable habitat there in the last decade has been the aerial great blue heron rookery. About 2005, it was started with a half dozen nests high in beaver drowned, needleless, white pines. There are over 40 nests now in pines still standing. This March the herons again returned, some to the same nests these reportedly monogamous couples used in previous years. We frequent visitors have noticed an increase in nest size as new sticks are yearly added. Just two weeks ago, two weeks after the dam breaches, we counted one or two parent herons on or perched beside each nest. We without helicopters or boats and ladders assumed eggs had been laid. On an afternoon visit the last day of April, we found the rookery strangely silent. The herons, except for three on nests near the Boxford State Forest side of the rookery, were gone. What happened? Our guess is that loss of water below them, due to the breaches, had led to abandonment. Middleton conservation agent, Judy Schmitz, said she has heard of cases of abandonment after predators gained easier access over exposed bottoms to nest trees. We wondered if fishers, raccoons, or possums, good climbers, hadn’t spooked them. Do they like heron eggs and chicks? One saddened old Closeteer returned four days later hoping he’d find the herons returned to their nests. He wondered if they hadn’t been off somewhere else on his previous visit with an equally upset friend, another longtime fan of the herons. Again the area was quiet except for gabbing geese feeding in the puddles. One disturbing observation made on three visits since the dam was breached was that the beavers have made no attempt, even after the traps were removed on April 15, to repair their dam. In the fall they quickly would, perhaps within a day. We don’t think the trapper got all of them because fairly fresh tracks were found in exposed mud a couple hundred feet from the dam. Another finding that bothered was the absence of frogs. Usually in hiking the perimeter of the impoundment we’d scare hundreds causing them to leap from shore edge to water. On the last two visits we only startled a half dozen along the remaining shallows. Frogs are certainly an important food for herons. Could their and other aquatic prey decline
be reasons for herons moving away?

As usual we are left with more questions than answers. However, there are a few things we are sure of. A human breached a dam that was harmless to his species; a dam that had over 14 years resulted in diverse and interesting habitats; “beaver meadows”, better “beaver lake” in this case, with the essential ingredients of lots of water and light. In a few days due to the breaches, these habitats were drastically altered. If we lived and worked a lifetime on a few square meters of exposed bottom we probably wouldn’t get close to determining the number of smaller creatures, such as, insect larvae, tiny crustaceans, worms, and protozoa near the bases of the food chains affected. In our opinion there is a great loophole in the Massachusetts’ wetland protection laws, which don’t, with a few minor exceptions, otherwise allow the alteration of wetlands. All human activities that affect beaver impoundments should require a permit from both the Board of Health and the Conservation Commission. More regulations you say? Please put yourself with the voiceless animals in and above the beaver meadows and with their human admirers.
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WATER RESOURCE AND CONSERVATION INFORMATION

FOR MIDDLETON, BOXFORD AND TOPSFIELD

Ipswich River Flow Rate (S. Middleton USGS Gage) in Cubic Feet per Second (CFS):

For May 7, 2013:   Normal . . . 81 CFS           Current Rate . . . Unavailable** CFS

*Danvers Water Filtration Plant, Lake Street, Middleton is the source for actual precipitation data thru April. Normals data is from the National Climatic Data Center.

** A beaver dam a quarter mile downstream from the USGS Gage has been causing invalid, thus unreleased gage reports.

*** Updated May precipitation data is from MST gage

THE WATER CLOSET is provided by the Middleton Stream Team: www.middletonstreamteam.org or <MSTMiddletonMA@gmail.com> or (978) 777-4584