Gene, let’s have the Taconic Chapter of Trout Unlimited (TU) and the Lenox Garden Club adopt the Williams River.” Those were the words heard on the telephone before I even had a chance to say hello. It was the familiar voice of the late Frances “Sissy” Paddock, of Lenox. At the time, (1985) we both served on the Board of the Housatonic River Watershed Association. She was also a board member of the Lenox Garden Club and I was the President of the Taconic Chapter of TU.
Sissy went on to say that Mass Riverways, a department under the control of the Fish & Wildlife Commissioner (now called the Division of Ecological Restoration (DER)) just introduced a program where groups could “adopt” a river. The State would provide $2,000 seed money to help get them started. She thought the Williams River, located in West Stockbridge and Housatonic, would be an ideal candidate to be adopted.
I reminded her of the raw sewage problem. (In the late 1980’s the Town of West Stockbridge was trying to resolve an old problem. Many buildings in the downtown area were discharging raw sewage into the Williams River in violation of Massachusetts and Federal law. The Commonwealth placed a deadline on this practice hoping to end pollution of a major natural resource. The town had no municipal sewage treatment plant due to the small number of potential users.)
I suggested that perhaps we should consider another, cleaner river. Her reply was that the Town of West Stockbridge was going to build a new sewage treatment plant, that the river would shortly be cleaned up and that people would treasure the river and start building next to it.
“Now is the time to educate the public on things to do to help protect it – proper shading, lack of herbicides near the banks of the river, etc.” She made a good case. If you knew Sissy, you knew that she rarely took “no, we can’t” for an answer. I agreed to bring it up at our next TU meeting.
“You have got to be kidding! That dirty river?” was the reaction of the TU members. Using the same arguments that Sissy used on me and because TU is dedicated to the preservation of cold waters and cold-water fisheries, I was ultimately able to convince them to adopt the river.
Sissy and I next approached the West Stockbridge town officials and explained the concept to them in an effort to enlist their support. The late Bill Hanford, a Taconic TU member, was a West Stockbridge resident who knew several Conservation Commission members accompanied us. After our presentations and discussions, the ConCom and selectmen supported the adoption. It was at that meeting that we met ConCom members Ed Desaulniers and John Masiero. Ed subsequently joined TU and both joined the cause and became two critically important additions to our group.
A coalition was formed which was made up of the Lenox Garden Club, Taconic TU and the Housatonic River Watershed Association. The Friends of the Williams River (FWR) was organized in 1988. It was a 501c3 non-profit corporation which received certification to adopt the Williams River from then DFWELE Commissioner Walter Bickford.
The FWR then obtained permission from the West Stockbridge Sportsmen’s Club to use the second floor of its building to hold its monthly meetings.
At its first meeting, a board of directors and officers were selected. I was elected president and newsletter editor, Sissy was the VP, Ed Desaulniers its Treasurer and John Masiero its Secretary. Other members included abutting land owners George Naventi and Jervis Gennari, Bill Hanford, and Dave Oclair, a TU member from Richmond. Berkshire Eagle outdoor sports columnist Ted Giddings was named an honorary member. He grew up in Housatonic near the Williams River and provided a great deal of history about it.
Shortly thereafter, the FWR developed a brochure explaining the organization. It was formed to “create a local awareness of the river, to eliminate littering and pollution and to promote the protection of the ecology of the unique headwaters, to protect wildlife and enhance their habitats, to promote water quality and to raise money to educate the community of these vital issues and to assist in land protection.” Annual membership was set at $15.
In compliance with the Adopt-a-Stream Program, TU members inventoried and surveyed the river to determine its positives and negatives, identifying sewage inflows, bank conditions, flora and fauna of the area. The good, the bad and the ugly were documented.
Another early project was to determine the area and size of the Williams River watershed. It extended from Richmond, Lenox and Canaan, NY to the Housatonic River in Housatonic (Great Barrington). Using funds from the Lenox Garden Club, MA Riverways and TU, a map of the watershed was produced which included every pond and feeder stream.
It was around that time that the FWR’s logo was chosen. It was the wish of the Lenox Garden Club that it be a pink lady slipper. Hey, they invested $1,000 in the river adoption, so no one objected.
One top priority was to try to contact every abutting landowner along the river and tributaries to inform them of the FWR’s existence, its mission and goals and to invite them to join it. A monthly newsletter was established which ultimately reached about 140 abutters and other interested people, informing them of all its activities.
Obtaining the addresses in West Stockbridge, Housatonic and Richmond for the mailing list was a huge task and having John, Ed and Bill on board was a great asset. There were others that we included on the mailing list also, MA Fish & Wildlife Commissioner George ‘Gige’ Darey, George Wislocki, Executive Director of the Berkshire Natural Resources Council (BNRC), Attorney Sarah ‘Sally’ Bell, members from MA Riverways, local businesses such as Taft Farm, Simon’s Rock of Bard College, and others. The newsletters was also distributed to all members of the Lenox Garden Club and TU.
In the late 1980’s, MA DFW requested input from sportsmen’s clubs as to what they thought the Division’s goals should be for the next 5 years. This matter was discussed by Taconic TU and also brought up at the monthly FWR meeting. FWR Board members had concerns that 84 acres of land on Maple Hill owned by John Astore would someday be sold and developed and the detrimental run off effects of development would reach the Williams River. By unanimous vote it was decided to send a letter to the Fish & Wildlife Board requesting that they try to purchase that property and establish a Wildlife Management Area (WMA).
At that time, I was the Environmental Vice Chair of the MA/RI Council of TU. I brought the matter up at the next quarterly meeting in Sturbridge, MA, seeking its support. It did and instructed me to send a letter to the F&W Board on behalf of the Council expressing its support for purchasing the Maple Hill property. At the time, the TU Council represented 12 chapters and about 3,000 members.
That letter carried a lot of weight because the requested land acquisition wasn’t just supported by a few folks living in the Berkshires, but by thousands of anglers statewide. That was all that Board Chairman George (Gige) Darey of Lenox needed to get the F&W Board to support it. DFW purchased the Astore property in May of 1990 and named it the Maple Hill Wildlife Management Area. In retrospect, that turned out to be a very important acquisition.
During the late 1980’s Mrs. Margaret Shaw owned 15+ acres of land nearby on the west side of the Williams River and decided to transfer ownership to the FWR. Then, FWR Board Member Jervis Genari, whose land abutted Shaw’s, deeded nearly 10 acres over to the FWR in December 1991. Attorney Sally Bell handled the legal work with the help of Ginny Akabane’s title research.
The Board was surprised to receive these gifts for it never solicited such lands and wasn’t quite sure how to best manage them. BNRC’s George Wislocki provided invaluable advice on those land acquisitions.
The FWR had become the closest thing that the town of West Stockbridge had to a land trust.
To be continued next week.
James Bitenbaugh.
