Belmont Conservation Commission

W o r k i n g t o C o n s e r v e Y o u r N a t u r a l R e s o u r c e s

summer 2007

Office Hours: Mon. - Fri. 7:30 am - 4:00 pm Meetings: Corner Meeting House, 1st Wed. of the Month, 7:00 pm Belmont Town Hall 143 Main Street, P.O. Box 310, Belmont, NH 03220-0310

p. 603.267.8300 x19 f. 603.267.8307 landuse@belmontnh.org

Belmont ConservationCommission Newsletter

We are devoting this issue of our newsletter

to water resources in the Town of Belmont.

Please take a few minutes and learn about the

water issues in our Town. Water sustains all

plants and animals and is the source of life

itself. It would be difficult to over-value

this natural resource.

Water resources and wetlands have been altered, degraded, and often destroyed over the ages. Wetlands are drained and filled for agriculture and development. The courses of streams and rivers are changed to lower water tables, improve drainage, or create power. Lakes become receptacles for garbage, pollutants, and sediment. Groundwater is polluted with toxic contaminants. Poor water quality often results. Greater awareness of these problems has led to protective federal, state, and local regulations. Still, our water resources continue to be threatened by development and its impacts. We need to make every effort as a Town to prevent further damage and to reverse the effects of any existing damage.

Buffer Zones andOur Water Resources in BelmontIn understanding the importance of buffer zones, let’s first consider Belmont’s 1.8 square miles of inland waters. The Town’s western boundary is made up entirely of Lake Winnisquam, Silver Lake, and the Winnipesaukee River. Lake Winnisquam is our largest waterbody (951 acres in Belmont); Silver Lake is the second largest with 83 acres within the Town’s boundaries. Smaller lakes and ponds include Sar-gent Lake, Pout Pond, and Clough Pond. Pout Pond is of special value as it is a source of Belmont drinking water and is a relatively un-disturbed habitat for aquatic and terrestrial plant and animal species.

The Tioga River flows diagonally across town into the Winnipesaukee River for 13 miles, with 11.8 of these miles within Belmont. Named brooks are Badger Brook, Pumping Station Branch, and Durgin Brook. There are also unnamed tributaries. With over 70 miles of rivers and streams, Belmont has an abundance of diverse riparian habitat, includ-ing floodplain forests, scrub-shrub wetlands, and meadows.

Buffers zones are important to the health of these aquatic ecosystems, to plant and wildlife communities, and to water quality. These natu-rally-vegetated strips along the periphery of a lake, stream or wetland prevent erosion, absorb pollutants, moderate water temperature, and provide habitat. Buffers include forest, meadow, or wetland vegetation.

Width can vary from twenty-five feet around a small pond to hundreds of feet along a river.

In Belmont, Silver Lake still has significant buffers while Winnisquam does not. The Tioga River is relatively well buffered but other areas of our 70 miles of rivers and streams are less so. Increasing buffer zones will allow Belmont to maintain its rich and diverse wildlife popula-tions, protect human areas from flooding, and help keep our water resources clean.

Home Landscaping and BuffersHomeowners and businesses can use ecological landscaping techniques to increase buffers between water bodies and man-made formations such as lawns, parking lots, and fields. Design principles outlined in the 2007 UNH Cooperative Extension manual entitled “Landscaping at the Water’s Edge” remind us that “shore lands benefit from stabilizing and retaining soil and reducing the volume and velocity of water runoff.” The goal is to keep as much water as possible on your property. Owners of shoreline properties can:

Improve soil quality to better hold water and grow plant material ^Include several vegetative layers (groundcovers, perennials, ^

vines, shrubs, trees)Use plants to slow water flow to the water body ^Increase plantings to increase buffer size ^Decrease lawn size ^Decrease chemical inputs like fertilizers, ^

pesticides, and herbicides Minimize impenetrable surfaces ^

like driveways and parking areasReplace impenetrable surfaces with ^

penetrable materials like gravel or stone dust.

Waterfront property owners can also employ swales, berms, boulders, trenches, cisterns, water barrels, rain gardens, and/or waterbars to further slow runoff and keep water on their property. A copy of the manual can be obtained by sending $20.00 to UNHCE Publications, Nesmith Hall, 131 Main Street, Durham, NH 03824. Make checks payable to UNH Cooperative Extension. Contact the publications of-fice at 862-2346 or ce.pubs@unh.edu if you have any questions.

The NH Shoreline Protection Act requires a buffer of 150 feet in woodland areas along shores that have not been previously disturbed. Conserving and increasing buffers along shorelines is a recommenda-tion from the newly completed Belmont Natural Resources Inventory (NRI) and should be a conservation priority in Belmont.

Summer 2007

Swamp? marsh? fen? seep? wet meadow? bog? vernal pool? These wet areas of land are the transitional areas that lie between dry land and water bodies. Some are wet all year and some for only part of the year. Size varies from that of a large mud puddle to thousands of acres. Each is unique in its own way but all are wetlands, the “kidneys” of our landscape. They clean our water, serving as filters to reduce chemi-cals and pollutants. Like sponges, they hold onto water and prevent soil erosion and flooding. (The recent Louisiana flooding was in part caused by the destruction and draining of acre upon acre of wetlands.) Wetlands also serve as buffers, protecting against flooding with their spongy soils, marsh grasses, and rooty water-loving plant life.

For many generations, wetlands were considered useless, undesirable, and even unhealthy. We now know that without the needed balance of wetlands, environmental havoc can occur. When developers dredge and fill wetlands, they are required by law to create a new wetland in a nearby area; this is called wetland mitigation. After some years, howev-er, these wetlands are often no longer maintained and monitored; they may or may not continue to function as man-made wetlands. This is a problem currently being studied by wetland scientists.

If you have a wetland area on your property, treat it with respect. Study its flora and fauna and prevent pollution from entering it as much as possible. See other articles in this newsletter for best manage-ment practices in keeping wetlands and other water resources healthy.

Belmont’s Natural ResourcesInventory CompletedOn Wednesday evening, July 11, 2007, Watershed to Wildlife Inc. con-sultants John Severance and Elise Lawson presented the completed Bel-mont Natural Resources Inventory (NRI) to the public at the Corner Meeting House. The goal of the meeting was to increase public awareness of the importance of the NRI findings, including scenic and recreation areas, riparian habitat, aquifer, water resources, wetlands, and wildlife.

The NRI includes an inventory of Belmont’s natural resources as well as management recommendations and planning tools. It integrates all existing natural resources data for Belmont, creating a comprehen-sive composite; wetlands mapping is a prime example. Through intensive fieldwork and the gathering of existing digital and other data, John and Elise have provided Belmont with a comprehensive study of our natural resources in handbook form and CD-Rom. They also gave a GIS map-ping workshop for Town officials and presented the NRI at the above mentioned public meeting.

The Natural Resources Inventory is now available on the Town of Belmont website. It is interesting reading, contains excellent maps, and should be useful to all citizens. Naturalists, developers, educators and students, youth organizations, birders, artists, politicians, activists, town officials and leaders, agriculturalists, foresters, conservationists, and tourism promoters should particularly find the NRI both valuable and instructive.

Belmont’s Current Aquifer Protection Belmont shares stratified drift aquifers with Northfield and Tilton; they also wish to protect their water supply. A stratified drift aquifer is a geologic formation of sediment deposited by glaciers and includes gravel, sand, silt, or clay. The aquifer yields significant quantities of wa-ter to our wells. Valuable sources of community and individual drink-ing water, they are also particularly susceptible to pollution because they consist of such permeable material. Pollutants can migrate for long distances in such aquifers. Around 37% of Belmont lies within the aquifer, well above the state average of 14%. Potential contamination is always a concern as the tri-town area continues to develop. “Currently, the drinking water in Belmont is good and clean, with only a pH adjustment and orthopo-lyphosphate to sequester iron and magnesium. Chlorination or other disinfectants are not needed which speaks highly of the water quality.” (Belmont Natural Resource Inventory, May 2007). That is good news!

The Town of Belmont now protects our aquifer through zoning or-dinances, site plan review regulations, subdivision regulations, and hazardous household waste disposal day. Regulations and ordinances outline what design and construction standards must be met in order to build a structure or conduct a business on the aquifer. Some busi-nesses are disallowed entirely. In accordance with NH RSA 485-C:12, prohibited uses in the aquifer wellhead protection area are: hazard-

What AreWetlands Anyway?

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Belmont Conservation Commission

ous waste disposal facility, solid waste landfill, outdoor storage of road salt or other deicing chemicals in bulk, and junk or salvage yard, snow dump, wastewater or septage lagoon.

To prevent contamination of the aquifer, Best Management Prac-tices (BMPs) developed by the NH Department of Environmental Services(NHDES) and others must be followed for activities such as fueling, disposal of construction materials, de-icing. BMPs help our town to continue to meet the demand for water, to protect public health, and to avoid the disastrous consequences and expenses associ-ated with contamination.

The Lakes Region Planning Commission, Belmont, Tilton, and North-field worked for two years to jointly create the Tri-Town Aquifer Proj-ect Best Management Practices Guidebook: http://www.lakesrpc.org/BMP/aquifer/index.html It will soon be available on Belmont’s web-site. Topics include BMPs for conservation design, erosion control, sep-tic systems, road maintenance, and storage tanks. Each BMP was chosen to protect our stratified drift aquifer and drinking water supply.

A smaller brochure was developed for homeowners to raise aware-ness of aquifer protection and BMPs. It contains alternatives to com-mon household practices that are potentially hazardous to the aquifer and our drinking water supply. You may pick up a copy at the Belmont Land Use Office in Town Hall.

Greater Protection For Our AquiferAs a town and as individuals we can continue taking steps towards greater levels of protection of the aquifer. We have a limited aqui-fer protection article in our zoning ordinances: http://belmontnh.org/docs/ords&apps/ZoningBelmontNH07.pdf This 4 paragraph article written in 1991 defines a stratified drift aquifer, states that aqui-fer wells must be shown on DES maps, that aquifers are susceptible to pollution, that certain uses are prohibited in accordance with RSA 485-C:12, and that boundary disputes will be settled by experts and paid for by developers.

The Belmont Master Plan of 2002 recommended that the town establish a Comprehensive Aquifer Protection Ordinance. Attempts have been made but were unsuccessful when taken to vote. An aquifer protection ordinance must be carefully planned, involving the input of many stakeholders.

Examples of additional protection tools used in comprehensive aquifer protection ordinances are:

Voluntary inspection program to ensure compliance ~with BMPs on the aquifer.

Compulsory inspection program of possible ~ contamination sites to ensure compliance

Zoning changes ~

Public health regulations ~

Groundwater classification upgrade.* ~

Education of both adults and children about water ~ resources and BMPs for aquifer protection.

The Center for Watershed Protection provides model ordinances for groundwater protection on its Storm Water Center site: http://www.stormwatercenter.net/ NH’s Model Groundwater Protection Or-dinance uses zoning changes, reclassification of the aquifer to higher levels of protection, and inspection of businesses or concerns as aqui-fer protection tools: http://www.des.state.nh.us/Dwspp/model_groundwater.pdf.

NHDES finds that site plan review and education on ground water and best management practices are the most frequently used aquifer protection tools in NH. Inspection of potential threats and aquifer protection zoning are becoming more common. Groundwater reclas-sification is the newest tool employed. Clearly, there are many ways to further protect our water supply. Belmont seems about average, then, in its efforts to protect our aquifer. Is average good enough when it comes to protecting our drinking water?

*Each higher classification carries greater ability to protect the aquifer. Currently Belmont’s aquifer is classified at the lowest level of GB. Go to http://des.nh.gov/dwspp/reclass.htm/ for groundwater reclassification information.

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