March 22, 2013 — A $56,000 state grant designated to improve fish runs in the First Herring Brook is only the most recent initiative to bring the fish back to Scituate, but by no means will it be the last.
The herring, an important feeder fish to those higher on the food chain and an ecological marker of how well an area is doing, has dwindled in recent years as water consumption increases and there is less of a brook for the fish to spawn in.
The problem is one Scituate officials, alongside those at the North and South River Watershed Association, have been working on for some time.
“We’re continuing to work with the town to manage the flows over the ladder and during the right biological seasons. This grant just awarded was to further that work,” said Samantha Woods, executive director for the NSRWA.
According to Woods, the town has had a longstanding issue with water usage, especially as the town’s reservoirs weren’t initially intended to have such a high demand.
To circumvent the problem, the town has since implemented a water ban during the summer months, started in 2011, focused on irrigation systems. Though it has angered some neighbors, the initiative has helped restore hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to the brook already, Woods said.
The town has also begun looking for leaks throughout the system to further tightening things up.
“We’re making strides in terms of conserving the water,” Woods said. “The summertime is a particular issue. There is no fish returning because we weren’t running the ladders with the right flows, or at all [for the fish to leave the reservoirs] in the fall.”
Read the full story at the Boston Globe