Hood Pond – Pond Street Culvert

Pond Street is one of over 500 culverts assessed by Ipswich River Watershed for UMass and MassDOT to determine how they complied with the new US Army Corp of Engineers stream crossing standards.  Pond Street culvert was ranked as the second most damaging culvert in the entire watershed to the passage of fish and wildlife.  It is also undersized for flood waters.

We as a culture do not appreciate the value of nature.  It is too complex, more complex than we can even imagine. Yet it stabilizes nearly all of the perturbations that our physical environment throws at us.

Every piece of this web is essential and has taken millennia to develop.  One simple culvert is blocking this process to function fully.  Nature has developed a system where the movement of animals is necessary.  In the case of Hood’s Pond, it’s the migration of river herring (Alewives) from the ocean up the Ipswich River to Howlett Brook, to Pye Brook and into Hood’s Pond.  They spawn in the pond and the young hatch, swim around Hood’s Pond for the summer, eat up all the algae that grow because of our septic pollution (read fertilizer) that is leaching into the Pond and then they swim out to the ocean taking these pond-killing nutrients with them.  At no cost to you or me.

The plans for the project  and supporting documents can be found at these links:

Michael O’Neill’s plan for the Conservation Commission

Project location and wetland resources

Howlett Brook NWF Grant Full Proposal

Stream Crossing Assessment Topsfield_BAR_2018