Water enthusiast and river scientist Kate Kennedy says her favorite place is on the water.
She is part of the multi-state team assessing the Connecticut River watershed.

The Connecticut River valley has been in use by humans for at least 11,000 years, as evidenced by the rock petroglyphs on its Vermont shoreline in Bellows Falls. It provided verdant land and good hunting grounds for early indigenous peoples. Indian corn fields flourished on both sides of the river in the rich floodplains along its entire length. The river, whose Mohican name, quinnitukqut, means "long tidal river," was the principle north-south travel route before roads and trains.

Today, with 22 dams along its 410-mile length, models that describe the flow pattern of the Connecticut River are being completed for the first time ever. The whole system is being studied and mapped, with five of the river's hydroelectric dams up for relicensing by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Three of these dams are in Vermont and New Hampshire, and two in Massachusetts.

The FERC relicensing process has spurred a four-state collaborative process, involving Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont, with state and federal agencies and non-profits all gathering data and assessing the Connecticut River's watershed and uses. The states have agreed to keep four things in mind: the ecology and effects of the flow of the river, recreational uses, erosion, and the temperature of the water.

Scientists at Work

Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), calls itself the leading conservation organization in the world. The organization's mission is to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. A private non-profit with two offices in Vermont—in Montpelier and West Haven—TNC has been an integral player in bringing back the health of the state's waterways and wetlands by modeling what successful remediation, restoration and conservation look like.

Three scientists at TNC—Rose Paul, Kathryn Kennedy and Kimberly Lutz—are front and center in assessing the Connecticut River, making sure all the components of biology and ecology, as well as usages for recreation and energy are measured in what's best for the river.

Emily Boedecker, deputy state director of TNC in Montpelier said in our recent interview, "We are in the fourth year of a five-year project to develop a flow model for the river, so that all parties involved have the knowledge, opportunity and say in how the watershed could be managed," Boedecker noted. Having been through similar relicensing efforts before, she emphasized: "The two hallmarks are to work through science and collaboration. We bring the science to explain what opportunities there are in watershed management."

"We are talking about a complex system," Boedecker continued. "A river influences all natural communities within a flow. We're looking at the best possible outcome for people and nature."

"We've all had a real wakeup call during Irene," she said. "It's important to understand how an entire river system works. We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance or ability to influence the river for the next 50 years. We want the best available information, and we need to work collaboratively."

This is an opportunity for communities to "get the benefits of hydroelectric energy, and do a little better for the ecology of the river at the same time. We can get the natural cycle back without affecting power generation."

She emphasized the critical need for understanding the river's flow, what she called "the root cause in the natural process of the river." The flow pattern "affects species in and beside the river riparian zone." A riparian zone is science's term for flood plains and river banks, which Vermonters were taught by Irene can wash away in floodwaters, or provide some protection when buffering woodlands are preserved.

Engineering the Future

Kathryn Kennedy is an applied river scientist for TNC. She said she spends most of her time in front of a computer, but her favorite place to be is "on the water." She likes "to sit, listen and observe," while her husband fishes.

"I was primarily hired to navigate TNC through the FERC process," Kennedy told Vermont Woman, but "another part is kind of guiding the ecosystem component of the whole hydrological system." That means she is working with the New England District Office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, located at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and its Hydrologic Engineering Center, along with the U.S. Geologic Survey. She and the engineers have created several mapping models of the "broad basin, or whole Connecticut River watershed." By modeling different options, they can predict likely outcomes.

The headwaters of the Connecticut River begin on the Canadian border in a little New Hampshire pond called the Fourth Connecticut Lake. The river meanders quietly at first, then majestically rolls down between Vermont and New Hampshire, down lower through Massachusetts and on to Connecticut, where it finally empties into Long Island Sound 410 miles later.

Kennedy may spend most her time at the computer, but she also has been "talking to people a lot and learning what peoples' values are along the river system. What are they looking to accomplish with some of the models? How can they see these models helping them make those decisions?"

While still in development, what Kennedy is creating are primarily tools for water managers. "I think about the ecology and biology, and how we can ensure that those connections are adequately described in the models for guidance."

Her job is to help translate what are essentially mathematical models. "I ensure that the ecological [component] is adequately described, by making sure that we are adequately accounting for the ecology." In other words, she makes sure the flows that engineers develop are accompanied by her analysis of whether that flow is adequate for biological communities located in and around the flow, helping to ensure water needs for life along the river.

River Meets Land

Kimberly Lutz is director of TNC's Connecticut River Program. She started out her career with a master's thesis in prairie ecology; she ended up on the Savannah River in South Carolina, doing a terrestrial project for a large military installation. She became interested in the river, and invited several of her colleagues down for a week to brainstorm a Savannah River project. She started to see the complexity of the river as a whole system that involved both terrestrial features and water.

"The complexity of rivers brings together watersheds and all the land elements … all the aquatic elements for a holistic view of the land and water together," Lutz says. "I was totally hooked. Now I'm passionate about water, and water issues have been my thing ever since."

When the Connecticut River job came up, and she saw its challenge, involving four states, she said, "I'm always up for an adventure, and we'd never lived in New England." So in 2003, she and her family moved from Savannah up to Northampton, Massachusetts.

Boedecker had said that Lutz launched "our river program."

"There was some planning done before I moved up," Lutz modestly said of her work, "by all four states. And part of that planning was how would a plan work on a watershed that spans all four states? They realized they needed to hire a director." But, she said, "A good portion of the thought process had already been done."

And how simple was it? "When I got here, 40 folks from federal and state agencies, academia and NGOs went through a planning process called Conservation Action Planning." She explained that in a series of meetings that lasted about a year, "various partners" came up with "strategies and themes we are still working on today."

Her job today is what she terms "matrix management. It's kind of interesting how we deploy across the [Connecticut River] basin." Lutz said there is a sort of synergy, not unlike the flow of the river itself, because TNC also thinks on a large scale.

"I guess I think of my position as the knitter," she explained, "knitting all the pieces together. There is a lot of interaction with federal entities nationwide. I not only deploy people on the ground, but at a higher level; we're figuring out a flood plain's key elements. It takes all those levels to make a successful collaboration," Lutz noted.

Ecosystems, Not States

She introduced another term, "whole system management," a kind of ecosystem and land management strategy that, unlike earlier approaches, emphasizes the interconnection of animal and plant life, land and water. Lutz said that it "really started on the East Coast with a handful of conservation projects." About eight years ago, she noted, "About 50 organizations banded together as friends of the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge." Their purpose was to conserve the abundance and diversity of native plants and animals and their habitats in the 7.2 million-acre Connecticut River watershed in the four-state region.

In 1991, U.S. Congressman Silvio O. Conte (R.-Mass.) asked Congress to establish a National Wildlife Refuge on the river. Conte said that his dream for his home state included, "a Connecticut River, cleaned, fishable, swimmable and with salmon restored to abundant numbers. And a dream that someday my children and grandchildren will continue to enjoy the outdoors as I have, and not be saddled with a planet polluted beyond repair." In 1997, the established federal refuge was named in his honor.

Late in 2011, the Conte Refuge and four state directors of the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) collaborated on education projects and initiated conservation projects with willing landowners. NRCS funding allowed the Conte Refuge to hire a private lands biologist for two years to work collaboratively with NRCS field staff in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont in conjunction with the respective state fish and wildlife agencies.

In 2012, the Connecticut River was designated the first of American Blueways, as part of the U.S. Interior Department's Great Outdoors Initiative that supports an array of smaller river-rehabilitation efforts.

Elms Redux

The reintroduction of disease-tolerant American elms in floodplains, to create a forested buffer zone that will capture sediment and provide shade to keep waters cool, is one of these projects."We have flood plain scientists doing detailed studies on the dominant species," Rose Paul explained. She meant the floodplain elms, which were devastated by Dutch elm disease decades ago. These trees are now rare, but viewed as necessary among those species that become "canopy trees."

Paul clarified, "The important role of elm trees in river ecology is as really good shade trees, and they are very long-lived trees. They provide shade to keep cold water cold. Cool waters are really important. The colder the water, the more oxygen it contains, so it's an important shade tree along streams and rivers." Paul said that elms are still common in both our upland forest streams and along lowland riversides.

She explained that green ash, silver maple and black willow still make up most floodplain forests, but they make for a somewhat homogenous forest. "What's missing is the elms as the other dominant tree in floodplain forests. The American elms would have been longer lived than silver maples, the tallest tree popping up above ash, maple and willow. That is a lot of habitat for all kinds of different birds, arboreal mammals and insects. That habitat has been missing."

"The American elms have evolved to withstand Dutch elm disease [DED]," Paul said. "The U.S. Forest Service went around the entire range of elms, looking for survivor trees that were big enough and old enough to have survived several waves of DED. They found that some of these survivor trees happened to have developed a natural resistance. A nursery in Ohio propagated them. They would inoculate them with DED, and if they didn't live through the challenge of the disease, the lineage was removed from consideration."

The Forest Service ended up with an elm with a true resistance to the disease. These are the trees being reintroduced at various conservancy locations along the Connecticut River. "I've been monitoring these trees twice a year, and they are showing very good survivorship with many still alive," she said.

Why Connect?

"I do have this feeling of nurturing in terms of managing these places," Paul said about her work. "In my heart it feels nurturing when I am keeping an eye out, and helping to intervene on the Connecticut River. I really enjoy a feeling of nurturing those early elm starts, and then having to back away and let it grow up and make it on its own."
Kennedy likewise recalled, "It was a pretty poignant moment when I realized that my direction in life was [to be] a voice for the voiceless. I think I got into the field because I was compassionate about the natural world and nature," Kennedy notes. "My skills are analytical, so I meld problem-solving and compassion."

"Women are coming into roles within TNC," Boedecker notes. We've had a pretty good balance in gender roles in science and conservation." But with the "FERC relicensing, dealing with dam owners and hydropower, there is a stark difference. I do believe the female way of being present in discussions and negotiation changes the dynamics in the room. It brings a different approach, a different energy into a tough discussion."

Lutz had just come back from a women-in-leadership workshop sponsored by the TNC. The organization's website acknowledges the important role that women can play in protecting Mother Nature: "We recognize that conservation of biological diversity is best advanced by the leadership and contributions of men and women of diverse backgrounds, beliefs and cultures," and their presence in all 50 states and in 30 countries attests to this commitment.

Lutz says of her TNC team's collaborative efforts, working with scores of organizations with different intentions for the Connecticut River project, "Diversity of thought makes for strong organizations."
It is not unlike nature, which thrives through its diversity.