Climate Change
Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness: Taking Action to Address Climate Change
Nashua River Watershed-wide Nature-based Solutions Project: MVP Action Grant
Under an MVP Action Grant, the NRWA is working with the communities of Ashburnham, Fitchburg, Groton, Leominster, and Pepperell to understand local climate change issues and ways that we can use Nature-based Solutions (sometimes called green infrastructure) to address those issues. Read NRWA Climate Change and the Nashua River Watershed produced by the NRWA’s Climate Impact Committee.
The communities involved in this project have identified flooding, drought, and extreme temperatures to be key issues that are negatively affecting human health and safety, drinking water supplies, and ecological resources. Nature-based Solutions can help to mitigate these impacts often at less cost than traditional built infrastructure.
A video about this project. (3:13 min.)
What are Nature-based Solutions?
Nature has evolved in ways that buffer storms and adapt to change. Many of the most effective strategies to address the impacts of climate change are based on those natural systems. Many of the impacts we are facing are exacerbated by the ways we have changed the natural landscape and reduced the effectiveness of nature’s tools. Impermeable surfaces, loss and disconnection of wetlands and floodplains, fragmentation of the landscape, barriers to the movement of wildlife, loss of forests and meadows, and many more human changes exacerbate the impacts of a warming climate. By actions such as increasing infiltration, slowing the flow of stormwater, reconnecting the landscape, conserving and managing our forests and meadows, and re-creating a more resilient environment, we can not only buffer impacts but also create an environment better adapted to the future.
Source: Compendium of Nature-based and ‘grey’ solutions to address climate- and water-related problems in European cities, released March 2020 by GROWGREEN.
Community-driven Process: Gathering Community Concerns and Ideas
NRWA together with project partners, including community leadership and project consultants from BSC Group, have conducted two community meetings for each of the five communities participating directly in this project. The first meetings were in-person with an introductory presentation on the concept of Nature-based Solutions, followed by breakout group conversations on community specific climate and environmental issues, attendee ideas for solutions, and identifying locations in the community that could benefit from Nature-based Solutions to address an existing issue.
The second round of meetings was conducted by zoom. Attendees reviewed a list of community sites that had been proposed at the first meetings, and they worked to create a refined focus list of sites to be further explored by site walk to determine their appropriateness to be included in this project.
Materials promoting community engagement in these meetings were prepared in the three most common locally spoken languages in an effort to reach a broad audience. View flyers in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole.
Site Visits
Next steps will see project partners and local citizens conducting site visits at each site identified in the second community meeting. Point of site visits? In preparation for the site visits, project participants were invited to a tour at Devens to view Nature-based Solutions implemented in that community.
Additionally, in support of this project, the NRWA has coordinated with the Devens Enterprise Commission to conduct a tour of Nature-based Solution sites in Devens allowing attendees to see these Solutions in action.
About this Grant Project
The NRWA is serving as the lead coordinator on “City of Fitchburg/Nashua River Watershed-Wide Nature-based Solutions Project”, a $400K MVP Action Grant awarded to the cities of Fitchburg and Leominster, and the towns of Ashburnham, Groton, and Pepperell for this two-year project.
The NRWA will work with the five focus communities to develop a plan to address these issues, including:
- An interactive tool kit with maps showing locations of suggested Nature Based Solutions (NBS) in 5 focus municipalities
- An explanation, with pictures of what each NBS is and how it is best implemented
- Outreach and education in the cities and towns, including educational programming in public schools in the five focus municipalities
The information and recommendations developed for these five municipalities will be transferable to other communities throughout the watershed. Watershed-wide maps will be developed that identify the soils and locations most amendable to NBS. The NRWA will develop a website that includes these maps and a watershed-wide Nature-based Solution Plan accessible to all 32 watershed communities.
This MVP grant was awarded by the Healey-Driscoll Administration’s Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program, which is administered by the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA).
Additional Resources
Updates to This Project
Using Nature to Adapt to Climate Change in the Nashua River Watershed
The NRWA is working with the communities of Ashburnham, Fitchburg, Groton, Leominster, and Pepperell to understand local climate change issues and ways that we can use Nature-based Solutions to address those issues. With input from local citizen and municipal...
