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Hunters Pond Dam Removal and Bound Brook Restoration Project

NSRWA Ecologist/South Shore Regional Coordinator for the MassBays Program, Sara Grady, has been involved with this project in two roles – monitoring support and public outreach. She will continue to be involved through monitoring of the project during construction and post-restoration, and promoting the project in the local community.

In an effort to strengthen ecosystem and community resilience to changing environmental conditions, the Town on Scituate, in partnership with the Massachusetts Division of Ecological Restoration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will remove Hunters Pond Dam. The project will open up approximately five miles of riverine corridor and nearly 200 total acres of diadromous fish rearing and spawning habitat. The dam is in “Poor” condition and rated as a “Significant Hazard” dam by the Massachusetts Office of Dam Safety. Hunters Pond Dam is the first dam on Bound Brook and is located at the head-of-tide at the Gulf River estuary. It is the primary impediment to fish passage on the Bound Brook system. Removal of the dam will benefit a variety of migratory fish including river herring, American eel, and rainbow smelt – species that have undergone a dramatic decline in Massachusetts over the last 400 years. The project will also restore tidal ebb & flow to Hunters Pond, floodplain function within a nine-square-mile coastal watershed, and improve water quality in Bound Brook.

http://www.habitat.noaa.gov/funding/coastalresiliencyprojects.html