NEWRY – Ten members of the Bear River Steering Committee learned Thursday night about the status of funding efforts to fix some of the 132 Bear River erosion sites identified last year.
Project consultant Jeff Stern selected about eight sites in the river’s upper watershed in Grafton Notch State Park as priority spots to fix, provided that grant money could be found to do the work.
Before the meeting, Stern said he showed park Superintendent Mark Wight, Maine Department of Transportation officials and Newry Selectman Steve Wight the problem areas identified in last year’s walk-through survey of the 43-square-mile watershed.
“The Grafton Notch State Park sites stretch from the top of the watershed on down to Screw Auger Falls,” Stern said. “It’s about a 4-mile stretch with road shoulders and culverts that are being washed out.”
Additionally, he said, the river runs next to Route 26 in a couple of places, where it sustains direct erosion from chipping road asphalt and sand and gravel.
“There are a number of problem areas in (the park) where Route 26 and the Bear River are squeezed together to get through the narrow notch,” Stern said.
Last year’s survey work identified channel straightening over the years in the park as one culprit behind the river’s instability.
Stern told the committee that it should go after about $50,000 in funding from the Transportation Department’s Surface Water Quality Program to fix the problems in the park.
The committee, he said, must nominate the project for program funding and, to better its chances, include letters of support from the town and community groups like the Mahoosuc Land Trust, Outward Bound, the Appalachian Mountain Club and Newry’s snowmobile club.
Should the committee get the grant, the application deadline for which is the end of August, work would be expected to start next year.
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