providing land and water resource solutions
Dover, New Hampshire, September 11, 2015 — Today, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced that a public-private partnership uniting foresters, farmers, birdwatchers, biologists, hunters and other conservationists has saved the New England cottontail from needing protection under the Endangered Species Act. The partnership has also initiated on-the-ground conservation efforts for the cottontail that will benefit the rabbit into the future.
Read more HERE
This past spring, Truslow Resource Consulting LLC and Opus Advisors LLC were chosen to be involved in the New Hampshire Water Sustainability Initiative and to work with the New Hampshire Lives on Water Steering Committee on planning for the future of water sustainability in many forms throughout New Hampshire. You can learn more about this effort at nhlivesonwater.org
The priorities of the New Hampshire Lives on Water (NH2O) Initiative are:
To have informed and engaged consumers
To have strong water infrastructure
To integrate management and planning for water resources
As part of this initiative, we sent out a brief survey to help us understand peoples’ views on water sustainability and gauge interest in the New Hampshire Lives on Water (NH2O) initiative. Over 100 people responded! More than half of the respondents are very involved with water resources in New Hampshire (volunteer or work in the field). Even with this high number involved in water already, we were able to glean some representative and very interesting data regarding perceptions of water sustainability in New Hampshire.
Below are some of the results of the survey:
The graphic displayed above is called a Wordle – a collage of text, where greater prominence is given to words that appear more frequently in the source sample (www.wordle.net). This Wordle was created in response to a question we posed in the survey:
What does water sustainability mean to you?
Not surprisingly water was the top word, followed by: clean, quality, future, life, generations, use, enough, quantity and so on.
If we attempt to put the prominent words in the Wordle into a sentence it might look something like:
Water sustainability means maintaining clean and plentiful water that will be available for us and future generations to use and enjoy.
We also asked:
What water issues are most important to you?
The water issue that was selected the most among survey respondents was Drinking Water with 95% of respondents selecting this issue as one of the most important. Wildlife and Public Recreation were water issues that were selected by 86% and 73% of respondents, respectively. Commercial Use and Irrigation was selected by 32% of survey respondents, perhaps a reflection of the target audience.
Other water issues that were most important to survey respondents included floodwater storage and wastewater infrastructure.
Lastly we asked:
Who should be involved in water sustainability and the NH2O Initiative?
Essentially, you said EVERYONE! … Farmers, State Agencies, Federal Agencies, Municipalities and Local Water Providers, Lake, River, and Watershed Associations and Alliances, Land Trusts, K-12 Schools and Students, Colleges and Universities, Industry and Commerce, Small Businesses, Tourism and Ski Industry, Citizens, Legislators, and more!
Stay informed through the NH2O website and help build awareness and momentum across the state.
At the end of January (2014), the New Hampshire Business Review featured a front-page article about the economic costs of invasive species in New Hampshire. In August of 2013, a team of researchers, including UNH professor Larry Harris, did a one-day sweep of several sites in along the New Hampshire coast searching for non-native plants and animals. Their effort included stops at Hampton River Marina and the Coastal Marine Laboratory, a UNH facility in New Castle. Researchers have been conducting these sweeps every 3 years since 2000. And while this year, no new introduced species were discovered, the team saw that the composition of communities was changing with higher relative abundances of some established invasive species. For example the invasive sea squirt called ciona, has become a dominant species at places like the Hampton River Marina. These creatures wreak havoc on aquaculture; clogging nets, fouling the netting of cages, and overgrowing mussels. Another dominant invasive species to inhabit the coastal waters of New Hampshire and New England is didemnum (another type of sea squirt). Didemnum is a serious marine pest, growing in thick, sheet-like colonies that attach to anything they can get a hold of, moorings, docks, boat ramps, etc.. They also clog intakes to cooling systems of water treatment plants.
Today, there are some efforts to slow the colonization of invasive species, including, stricter rules about cleaning ballast water in commercial ships and having boat ramp monitors inspect boats and trailers upon pull out. But there is still not enough action and there seems to be very little interest from funding agencies to support research to understand how invasive species impact the ecosystem, as well how to deal with them.
For more information and to read the entire article click here.
On Monday, March 3rd 2014, the Dover Conservation Commission held a special meeting to discuss the progress made on the Sawyer’s Mill Dam Removal Feasibility Study. Danna Truslow of Truslow Resource Consulting, Duncan Mellor of Waterfront Engineers, and Steve Haight of Haight Engineering all presented to the Commission on different aspects of the dam removal study.
The meeting was covered by Foster’s Daily Democrat newspaper and an article summarizing the meeting was published on Tuesday, March 4th. Click to read Owner wants dams removed: Sawyer Mill consultant says state lists them as ‘high hazard’
Truslow Resource Consulting is pleased to offer a new service to its clients, Land Conservation Planning and Project Management.
If you have read the news lately you will have seen that sea level rise and coastal resiliency planning are making the front page, especially along the New Hampshire Seacoast. Sea level rise and adaptation in coastal communities was the topic of a five-article series on Seacoast Online this summer written by Deborah McDermott. And for good reason, as sea level rise presents real threats in coastal communities.
Projections based on LIDAR modeling (a laser measuring system) indicate that the Seacoast region will see about 2 feet of sea level rise by 2050 and between 3 and 6 feet by 2100. (NHDES) Add a storm surge on top of that, especially if a storm should happen at high tide or during spring tides (highest tides of the month), and it is
obvious that many coastal communities would be in trouble.
Much is at risk in the Seacoast. In the city of Portsmouth, $32-$600 million in property would be vulnerable to sea level rise and storm surge in the future. In Hampton, Hampton Falls, and Seabrook, a 2012 study estimates the cost is between $1.9 billion and $2.8 billion.
Fortunately, there is NHCAW! The New Hampshire Coastal Adaptation Workgroup (NHCAW) is a collaboration of organizations working to help communities in New Hampshire’s Seacoast area prepare for the effects of extreme weather events and other effects of long term climate change. NHCAW provides communities with education, facilitation and guidance.
And fortunately, many of the Seacoast towns understand the urgency to begin planning for sea level rise now. The City of Portsmouth recently completed a vulnerability assessment that will be used as a guide for the next iteration of its master plan. Peter Britz, the city’s environmental planner and sustainability coordinator, said the price of adapting to sea level rise is four times less than the cost of simply losing vulnerable swaths of the city.
It is a similar story in Hampton and Seabrook. If adaptation measures are taken over the course of the next few decades, the cost benefit ratio ranges from 2:1 to as much as 10:1 compared to taking no action.
New Castle, Rye, and North Hampton are all in the process right now of starting to evaluate their resources and are discussing incorporating sea level rise and storm surge into their planning. Rye is updating its town’s master plan to incorporate language about sea level rise. York, Maine is adding a sea level rise chapter to the town’s comprehensive plan, which will go up for approval in November.
Along the Seacoast, sea level rise and climate change, are no longer “hot topics” within community planning boards. Coastal communities have conceded to the inevitable and are accepting the challenge to make their towns resilient and prepared for the future. We encourage you to follow the NHCAW blog and visit the StormSmart Coasts website for updates on new initiatives and activities in climate preparedness in New Hampshire.
A partnership including SeaPlan (a collaborator in the LISS CCMP Update project), representatives of the boating industry, New England states and the state of New York, U.S. Coast Guard, and NROC (Northeast Regional Ocean Council) conducted the survey of thousands of coastal boaters in the Northeast during the 2012 boating season. The survey is part of a larger effort that is underway in New England to gather science-based, stakeholder informed information to inform regional ocean planning. The study collected information such as reported boating expenditures over the year, boating routes and popular areas of activities such as recreational fishing and wildlife viewing. Here are some of the interesting facts from the study:
