Riverfront Workshop

On Saturday, November 18, I attended a community meeting to discuss upcoming renovations to the park on the Watertown side of the Charles River (from Watertown Center to the Yacht Club). The meeting was called by a stewardship group that included representatives from town government and businesses, the DCR (the state Department of Conservation and Recreation), and the Solomon Fund, which is providing seed money for this effort. About 50 people turned out for the meeting, about half of which joined a pre-meeting riverfront walk led by Peter Del Tredici, a town resident and a Senior Research Scientist at the Arnold Arboretum.

Peter identified many of the trees that were present on the site, including this street planting Chinese Zelkovas near Watertown Square (photo on left below). Within a few blocks of walking, we passed many types of trees, including (among others):
- crapapple, probably a remnant of the original planting scheme
- silver maple, a native tree
- black alder a European tree that fixes nitrogen and is a good bank stabilizer
- American elm (probably soon to succumb to Dutch elm disease)
- pin oak, a bottomland species from the Pennsylvania area that is good for riverside conditions
- river birch, a great tree for bank stabilization
- sycamore
- a stately Olmsted-era red oak
- black cherry
- white poplar, an invasive species
- gray birch

Many of these trees were of a similar age and reaching the end of their lifetime, with no young trees coming along to take their place (except for some Norway Maple seedlings, which are not considered to be a desireable tree).

The paved path was in poor shape with tree roots heaving it up. In many places, it was overgrown with underbrush, including rampant poison ivy. Infrastructure, such as this bike rake is in poor repair and overgrown.

One major issue is bank erosion. sometimes extending as far as the path. Along some areas, there is a rock wall holding up the bank, which has help up quite well (see bottom right below). In other areas there is considerable erosion, especially near the outflow pipe shown on the bottom left below.

The community meeting, at Perkins School, had three breakout sections, to discuss uses, design, and maintenance. Many ideas were generated, so I'm just going to list a few things that jumped out at me.

Dan Driscoll, of the DCR, talked about the metropolitan park context. This section of the river is an intermediate zone between the more natural sections above the Watertown Dam, and the more manicured areas of the lower basin. Peter Del Tredici said that it functioned as an "urban forest", and that the design concept was a good one. So the goal here was not to radically change the park, but just refurbish it by fixing the areas of concern. The timeframe of the project is to do the design phase in 2007 and the implementation phase in 2008

There was discussion of access: both handicapped access within the park and making it easier to cross the streets to access the parks. There were requests for more trash cans, but Dan Driscoll explained that the DCR has essentially given up on trash cans because of severe vandalism problems. (Apparently, some people think it's fun to throw trash cans into the river, sigh.) On the maintenance front, Peter Del Tredici suggested drawing up a list of recommended species that would work well in this context for the designers to use.

Several of us raised the issue of poison ivy. I mentioned that I had been avoiding walking in that section of the park because of the poison ivy and one volunteer spoke of how she got a severe rash after a work session. Peter Del Tredici agreed that even though it's a native plant, poison ivy is a public health issue. Dan Driscoll said that it's impossible to remove poison ivy by hand (even if you could find the brave volunteer to do so), and that they have tried to come up with careful and controlled spraying methods to eliminate it, but in order to do so, they need to get approval from the Conservation Commission and the local residents, which is sometimes a barrier.

There was also some discussion of access to the water, and water views. The problem is that vegetation along the bank blocks the views, but also controls erosion. Grassy slopes leading to the water quickly attract wild geese, which can make quite a mess. One solution that is being considered are the boardwalk-type overlooks that have been put in place in the section above the Watertown Dam.

There were many other issues discussed, from the posting of historical markers, to the type of path surface that would be preferred. All of this input will be fed into the next step of the process, which will involve working with design firms for a preliminary design. I'll be looking forward to seeing what happens next.