The Belmont Stormwater Working
Our invited speaker is Julie Wormser, Deputy Director of the Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA). She will speak about MyRWA’s Climate Resilience program to work with municipalities, businesses, and community organizations on a regional climate resilience strategy for the watershed. We look forward to discussing ways Belmont groups, businesses, and the Town can help increase resilience to both drought and flooding from climate change.
Please join us to talk about the role we might play here at the periphery of the Mystic River Watershed, with our hills and what used to be our low-lying marshes and farms. On your next visit to the library, go upstairs and take a look at the Belmont topology diorama constructed out of plywood by a 1950s boy scout troop. It makes more real the “contour” and “flood plain” layers you can explore when you zoom in on Belmont’s public Geographical Information System (GIS) map to look for what might happen in your neighborhood should extreme storms come our way. As we watch transfixed to understand and learn from the devastation wrought by events like Typhoon Mangkhut and Hurricane Florence, bring your questions and ideas about the steps Belmont groups might take to help build a more resilient set of communities in the Alewife sub-watershed. Alewife Brook connects most of our Belmont waters to the Mystic River as it flows into Boston Harbor by way of the Amelia Earhart Dam. The dam has protected us from storm surge but can also block the flow from extreme rain events from reaching those rising seas.
Anne-Marie and Fred