Mayor Jennifer Macksey issued a statement Thursday announcing that planned forest management work in the Notch Reservoir had been canceled. The Notch Reservoir Forest Stewardship Plan was intended to address invasive species, culvert repairs, and tree disease on the over 1,000-acre site just southwest of North Adams’ core around a municipal water supply.
Saying she would not comment further on the move, the release contained the following statement from the mayor:
“The plan was laid out by our knowledgeable and dedicated partners to address key threats to this property and would have helped the City proactively manage our watershed’s forest. However, given the public outcry regarding the impact the project could have on the Bellows Pipe Trail, I have decided to not move forward with the plan.”
The cancelation was preceded by an informational meeting on the project held by its opponents at All Saints Episcopal Church on December 13th.
“The big question always when you're having a meeting is why you came out, why you're here, and in this case, I think you probably all realize that there's a logging plan threatening the water supply of North Adams," said Friends of the Notch Reservoir and Bellows Pipe Trailhead co-founder Doone McKay of North Adams. “And how this happened, as far as we can tell, is that in 2022, three nonprofit entities – New England Forestry Foundation, Woodlands Partnership, and Mass Audubon – got together with some grant money and offered grant money to the city of North Adams to create a climate resilient forest management plan, which sounds great. Who wouldn't want that? But after two years of public meetings that nobody heard about – they say they were public, we didn't hear about them – we got a logging plan instead.”
Critics decried the plan as inconsistent, overreaching, and potentially dangerous for the community.
“When we do the logging, we're increasing loss of factors, including the possibility for brush fires, because you will end up with more low growth- both native plants, but also nonnatives. We'll get the invasives, we will get the erosion that's beginning to be seen, but additionally, we get compaction as well. It’s the logging vehicles," explained Berkshire landscape architect Walter Cudnohufsky. "I think our cars might be something like two or three tons, a truck might be 10 tons or eight tons- The logging machines are 30 or 40 tons, and they're loaded at 100 tons. So, the tire track, 22 inches wide and riding around on the very fragile soil, steep slope are compacting great amounts, increasing the amount of water that runs off, making it more like pavement. And ultimately, when it's open to the sun, it's going to dry out.”
The architect said the plan’s logging routes would take a devastating toll on the surrounding ecosystem.
“The areas of disturbed earth – this is not yet compaction, that is calculated based on the logging operation and those roads – is something like 26 acres, 17 football fields," he said. "And so, a huge amount of this tract is planned for disturbed soils.”
Cudnohufsky said he feared a domino effect where potential logging impacts would dovetail with inadequate reservoir infrastructure.
“The dam is in some ways needing repair and deficient," the architect continued. "It can be easily overtopped, and it isn't predicted to hold the storms that already are known to be happening every 105, 100 years. We see storms like that coming all too frequently. So, the dam is predicted to be overtopped, and thus it's going to be worked on. But harvesting in the zone will increase the amount of runoff dramatically, so that needs to be accounted for. We've discovered it hasn't been. So, the dam will be overtopped. Currently, the extreme storms look like a 1.3-foot overtopping of the dam, destabilizing it. Runoff would increase dramatically.”
Near the end of the meeting, McKay noted successful past efforts from advocates to make changes to the forest management plan.
“They took out the herbicides, they- Initially, they were going to plant seedlings from three and a half to four feet from Wisconsin and source them, but now they, when somebody said, why get trees from Wisconsin, we've got trees right here, they said, okay, we'll use local seedlings, we'll get [them] Massachusetts-sourced, things like that," she said. "So, it made adjustments. Every time you raise an objection, they make an adjustment, but they still want to go forward with the main logging as far as we can tell.”
Macksey’s statement officially confirmed the project is dead and ended with the following line from the mayor:
“People’s attachment to this particular section of the forest made for some passionate advocacy. I hope they stay will stay involved and answer the call for their input when asked in the future.”
