Thames River Basin Partnership

The Thames River Basin Partnership is a coalition of government agencies, non-profit organizations, educational institutions, industries, municipalities, and individuals with a shared focus on natural resource conservation in the greater Thames watershed basin and adjoining coastal areas.

Our mission is to:

Protect the region’s agricultural and natural areas threatened by land use changes.

Protect ground and surface water quantity and quality being threatened and degraded by contamination.

Protect the region’s biodiversity.

Improve coastal zone resource conditions.

Each year since the year 2000, the Partnership has hosted a “Floating Workshop”. As the name implies, the workshop includes some type of on-water component. This year was our 23 ^rd  annual event. To learn more about previous Floating Workshops, use this link.  https://thamesriverbasinpartnership.org/floatingworkshops/ 

This year’s workshop began at Project Oceanology, located at Avery Point in Groton. It included a tour of the Thames River aboard the Envirolab II.

Workshop participants were welcomed to Project O by Andrew Ely, their Executive Director.

Next, Jean Pillo, TRBP Coordinator, welcomed the guests to the Floating Workshop.

The theme of TRBP Floating Workshop #23 was Resilient and Sustainable Communities. That is a very broad topic that many of our Partners are addressing using different strategies. For this workshop, we featured just a few ongoing efforts by our Partner organizations.

Our keynote address featured David Murphy, CIRCA’s Director of Resilience Engineering. CIRCA is short for Connecticut Institute for Resilience & Climate Adaptation. CIRCA is a partnership between UCONN and the CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CTDEEP).  

CIRCA’s mission is to help Connecticut’s towns and cities be more resilient to the impacts of climate change and extreme weather.  To be more resilient, critical infrastructure within a municipality must be protected. CIRCA helps communities identify critical infrastructure that is at risk, measures the vulnerability of that infrastructure, and identifies ways to reduce that vulnerability.  

In his presentation, David overviewed a recently completed pilot project that focused on Fairfield and New Haven counties, which experienced the worse impacts from Superstorm Sandy in 2012. CIRCA has now moved on to Middlesex, New London and Hartford Counties in what is being dubbed Resilient Connecticut 2.0. CIRCA staff are reaching out to municipal leaders in the Thames watershed with a special focus on flooding concerns and extreme heat conditions.  Local participation in their efforts is welcome and appreciated.

Our next presenter was Sarah Watson, a Senior Environmental Analyst Office of Climate Planning, Office of the Commissioner in the CT DEEP. Sarah serves as the Manager of the CT DEEP Climate Resilience Fund. She explained different funding assistance programs for municipalities involved with resiliency planning. The DEEP Climate Resilience Fund provides grants to help Connecticut communities initiate planning and develop projects that will help communities become more resilient to the effects of climate change. The Fund specifically is intended to support climate resilience planning at regional, municipal, and neighborhood-level scales, and to support resilience project scoping and development.

A primary outcome of this program is to help Connecticut communities develop a climate resilience project pipeline that can win competitive federal grant funding that is available to fund those projects’ implementation and construction.

Information on how to apply for, and list of, Federal resilience grant opportunities can be found at this link.  https://portal.ct.gov/ConnecticutClimateAction/Executive-Order/DEEP-Climate-Resilience-Fund .

Time to transition from the classroom to the research vessel for our Thames River tour, but first we got our required safety lesson from Kim Donahue of Project O.

Our Thames River tour included two stops. The first stop was at the State Pier, which is being redeveloped to serve as staging area in support of three large-scale offshore wind power projects. These three combined projects, when completed, will generate enough electricity to power a million homes. Sustainable and renewable energy is an important part of the Governor’s Council on Climate Change (GC3) strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Sarah Watson of CT DEEP led the discussion on this topic.

Next up was Rahiem V. Eleazer, an Environmental Liaison representing the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation (MPTN). He was asked to speak about the MPTN Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment they recently completed. Working with the Tribal Elders, one focus of this effort was on the impacts of climate change on culturally significant plant species, including a substantial Atlantic White Cedar Swamp that is partially on their Reservation. Various Partners spoke up about related concerns in the area, opening the door to future collaboration.

Jean DeSmet, representing the Garden Club of Windham, provided a summary and update on a Willimantic Urban Forestry Initiative. Willimantic is part of Windham, and one of Connecticut’s most economically distressed urban communities. The tree planting project is being led by Michael Culbertson, a Yale School of Forestry student. He is working with the Garden Club of Windham on this initiative. A $27,339 grant from Connecticut Urban Forest Council will support planting forty-eight 2-3” caliper trees, mostly oak and maple, with some dogwoods and redbuds, across the community. Cooperation from the Town of Windham Public Works Department in site preparation and planting assistance from volunteers from Eastern Connecticut State University is allowing this grassroots project to progress.

Our next stop involved cruising under the Gold Star Memorial Bridge to reach it. The elevator train bridge was opened for us as we passed under. A large ferry coming up the river is visible further down river. 

We stopped offshore of the Connecticut College property to view an area known as Camel Reef, named in honor of the Connecticut College mascot. This area of the Thames River shoreline is subjected to erosion. Since 2020, Professor Maria Rosa and her students at Connecticut College have been molding and installing artificial reef structures called "reef balls" in the inter-tidal area to reduce further erosion and aid in the accretion of sediment on the inland side of the artificial reef. Actual work was taking place the morning of the workshop to install additional reef balls, but had to cease when the tide came in.

Diana Nguyen, an Equitable Conservation Manager with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), summarized the work at Camel Reef and talked about an ongoing partnership between Maria Rosa, TNC, and The Reef Ball Foundation to launch the Connecticut Reef Ball Collaborative. The Connecticut Reef Ball Collaborative provides support to communities in southeastern CT to pilot living shoreline projects through a Reef Ball Mold Sharing Program and funding support to cover reef ball project costs (such as training, permitting fees, etc.). Any communities interested in learning more about the funding support for living shoreline projects and the Reef Ball Mold Sharing Program are encouraged to contact Diana at TNC.

As we began our return cruise to the Project Oceanology dock, Project O staff Kim Donahue and Kat Cuzco led a hands-on activity featuring the organisms that live on an oyster reef. Smaller reef balls can be used to provide clean hard substrate that young oysters (spat) need to adhere to. This is another beneficial artificial reef project supported by the reef ball structures as their rough surface textures are ideal for oyster settlement and growth. Oysters have an amazing natural ability to filter water, and oyster reefs effectively dissipate wave energy and help to reduce shoreline erosion. Besides oysters, their live specimens included other critters commonly associated with oyster communities, including tunicates, crabs and snails.

With enough scientific instruction under our belts, it was time to break out the refreshments and begin the networking.

This workshop was made possible by a generous sponsorship from Chelsea Groton Bank.

The Thames River Basin Partnership Coordinator is funded through a cooperative agreement between The Last Green Valley and the Eastern Connecticut Conservation District.

Millennium Power in Charlton, MA is key sponsor of the TRBP Coordinator position.

For more information about the Thames River Basin Partnership, please visit our website at:  https://thamesriverbasinpartnership.org .

All are invited to participate in our quarterly meetings, sign up to subscribe to our quarterly newsletter, the Thames River Basin Partnership Partners in Action Report, and/or follow us on Facebook.  https://www.facebook.com/Thames-River-Basin-Partnership