Concord
The Connecticut River Watershed Council, based in Greenfield, Mass., received three grants that will go toward projects in Upper Valley towns, according to a news release from the foundation.
In Norwich, $27,600 will support engineering designs for the removal of a dam on the Charles Brown Brook that washed out during Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. In West Fairlee, $57,500 will help pay to clean up the remains of the Geer Dam, on the Ompompanoosuc River. In Haverhill, the removal of Clark Pond Dam and Pine Mill Dam will be funded by a $149,500 gift that will also finance a fish passage project on Clark Brook.
The Hanover Conservancy won a $5,000 grant to conserve the South Esker forest, a 14-acre plot on the Connecticut River near the town border with Lebanon.
Vermont Land Trust will get $50,000 toward the Halls Brook Watershed project, a move to expand the Newbury Town Forest in Newbury, Vt.
And lastly in Upper Valley grants, the White River Partnership, of South Royalton, was awarded $69,348 for planning and engineering to remove a dam that could clear the flow of water on the Second Branch of the White River, a waterway that flows through Royalton, Bethel and Randolph.
The grants from the charitable foundation come from an Upper Connecticut River Mitigation and Enhancement Fund created in 1997 as part of a settlement agreement between the owners of three dams at Fifteen Mile Falls near Littleton, N.H., and Ryegate, Vt., and local communities and state and federal agencies, according to the release..