Trees will help clean Merrimack

Caroly Shumway knows living in the midst of greens isn't always so green.

From fertilizers for the lawn to defective septic systems, suburban life has various sources of bacteria and nutrients that can run into nearby rivers to pollute them, according to Shumway, executive director of Merrimack River Watershed Council.

The council is trying to keep these pollutants from going into the Merrimack River after the federal government awarded $300,000 in grant for the nonprofit agency to work on the initiative. The organization's goal is to plant more trees along some tributaries of the Merrimack and create larger natural buffers for the river that supplies drinking water to 600,000 residents in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

"This will help clean up the water before it gets to Lowell" and other developed areas, Shumway said.

U.S. Forest Service/Northeast Area State and Private Forestry recently awarded the Merrimack River Watershed Council with a three-year grant called "Expanding Riparian forest buffers in threatened urban and suburban watersheds: A precision storm water approach."

The funding will help the Lawrence-based organization identify three smaller watersheds within the Merrimack River watershed in Massachusetts and another three in New Hampshire where expansion of protection buffers through tree and shrub plantings would make the greatest impact for the water quality of the river.

The MRWC will be working the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Nashua River Watershed Association and the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, Shumway said.

The council has already selected five smaller watersheds as potential project sites in Massachusetts. They include three in the Nashua River -- two of which are near the Squannacook River -- one in the Assabet River in the Concord area and Powwow River in the Amesbury area. The Council will eventually choose three of these five sub-watersheds for the project.

The project is important because the U.S. Forest Service identified the Merrimack as one of the most "threatened" rivers in the country in its report in 2010, Shumway said. In that report, the Merrimack ranked first among rivers in the eastern part of the U.S. in terms of the amount of private forested land that will be lost over the next two decades. Over the past years, old mill cities like Lowell installed more storm-water-only sewer pipes to prevent overflow from wastewater treatment plants during heavy rainfalls has helped improve the water quality in the Merrimack. But increasing buffers upstream to filter out pathogens and nutrients is also important, Shumway said.

Shumway said every dollar invested in land preservation for the protection of drinking-water sources translates into $27 savings on the cost of water treatment.

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Trees will help clean Merrimack