Bank erosion on Barnard Brook adjacent to the Billings Community Garden. Photo: Michael J Caduto.
Since 2009, Sustainable Woodstock’s Billings Community Garden has sat adjacent to Barnard Brook across the road from Billings Farm and Museum. Barnard Brook’s streambank has eroded over the years, notably during Tropical Storm Irene. July 2023 flooding also caused a massive amount of erosion. This bank erosion has finally reached the community garden itself, and is now beginning to destroy the plots Sustainable Woodstock uses to grow food for the Woodstock Community Food Shelf. If erosion is allowed to continue, the brook will continue to move, eventually eroding land up until it reaches Old River Road.
Sustainable Woodstock is excited to announce that we will manage a project to restore the riverbank at this Barnard Brook site using WISPr Funding. WISPr (Water Infrastructure Sponsorship Program) is a very specific way of funding natural resources projects in Vermont. Towns that hold Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) loans are eligible to sponsor WISPr natural resource projects. Because the town of Woodstock has a CWSRF loan for work on the South Woodstock Wastewater Treatment Plant, they can sponsor projects like the one at the Billings Community Garden site.
WISPr increases the principle of the loan, but then reduces the administrative rate (similar to an interest rate) on the loan, saving the town money on the loan when all is said and done by reducing the total amount of money they town will need to repay. In total, the WISPr Program will provide $227,014 in funding to cover the cost of implementing natural resource projects throughout the town and village of Woodstock. The Barnard Brook project will be the first project to use these funds, and Sustainable Woodstock will oversee the project and manage funding.
Sustainable Woodstock began work to address the erosion along Barnard Brook in 2022 with a grant of $11,714 from the VT Agency of Natural Resources, which was used to complete the 30% design for the project. We will now use WISPr funding to complete a 100% design of the project this fall. We will then apply for WISPr funding to implement the project, restoring the eroded riverbank using green infrastructure methods and reestablishing a vegetated buffer. We hope to complete all of this physical restoration work next spring.
We do not yet know what the final design will look like, but we will lose a portion of the Community Garden to this work– potentially 25% of the garden or more. We hope to add space to the other end of the garden, and are also considering adding garden space to our King Farm Community Garden. We will continue to explore options to maintain the size of our gardens, which serve 30 families a year and produce hundreds of pounds of produce for the Food Shelf annually.
Importantly, this bank restoration project will address sediment and nutrient pollution in Barnard Brook. Barnard Brook is identified in the Ottauquechee River Watershed Updated Water Quality/Aquatic Habitat Assessment Report as being stressed for sediment due to streambank erosion and loss of riparian vegetation. At the location of this project the bank is rapidly eroding, depositing sediment and nutrients in the brook. Due to the bank erosion, there are high levels of sediment in the brook, which raise water temperature and negatively impact plants, vertebrates, and insects. Stabilizing the bank is one step towards a healthier brook.
Sustainable Woodstock is pleased to partner on this project with Billings Farm, who manages the property. We are grateful for our other partners, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation and the Town of Woodstock, for making this possible.
