Hi Im Eric Ford for Made Here.

The Merrimack: River at Risk looks at one of the countrys most threatened watersheds.

Director Jerry Monkman, from Concord, NH, explores the Merrimack and the towns and cities that have relied on it throughout history.

Remarkably, more than 80 percent of the Merrimack watershed is still undeveloped and largely forested.

However, in 2016 it was named one of the most endangered rivers in the United States.

You can watch the Merrimack and other great made here films streaming on vermontpublic.org and through the PBS app.

Enjoy the film and thanks for watching.

This film made possible by Merrimack County Savings Bank, BCM Environmental and Land Law PLLC, and the Norwin S and Elizabeth N Bean Foundation.

[raining] So it all started with the water.

It all started with the water.

And so the forest owes its existence to the Merrimack River.

[music playing] All rivers rise and fall over the course of a day, a season, a year.

For the last century and a half, many rivers have seen their health rise and fall as well.

The Merrimack is one of those rivers, and its stories seems to repeat itself every 50 years or so, though in different ways.

Do you think that people who are working here care about the river at all?

I think that a lot of people in my building really like watching it.

I don't know how much they care about it, but I think they enjoy looking at it.

So what does the Merrimack River mean to you?

It doesn't really mean much to me, you know?

I don't remember the first time I encountered the Merrimack.

It's just always been there.

I was born in its watershed, grew up playing in the lakes and streams that feed it, and as an adult I am working to protect the land surrounding the river and its tributaries.

Did you know that actually, even though this river seems like really nice to swim in and pretty clear, it's one of the most endangered rivers in the United States?

Endangered?

What does that mean, exactly, endangered?

Nearly 50 years ago, the Clean Water Act began the process that cleaned up America's rivers, turning them from open sewers into places that support wildlife and people in countless ways.

But today the Merrimack is again on the verge of taking a step backward, putting at risk those things previous generations worked so hard to protect.

It's really dirty.

Stinky.

Maybe we don't think about the river as much as we once did.

You know, we're driving up 93 to get to the forest and we're crossing over the river on the way and not really thinking that much about it.

For the last few years, I've been thinking about the Merrimack a lot, and exploring the watershed and talking to people who think about it every day, from river guides to water treatment managers to foresters.

This is my journey to understand why the Merrimack is at risk.

[music playing] My journey begins in Franklin, New Hampshire, where the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee Rivers converge to form the Merrimack.

117 miles later, the river empties into the Gulf of Maine and the Atlantic Ocean on the north shore of Massachusetts.

At 5,000 square miles, it is the fourth largest watershed in New England.

In the Merrimack watershed, rivers such as the Contoocook, Souhegan, Nashua, and Concord, in addition to many other streams and brooks, all drain into the Merrimack as it flows to the ocean.

To many, the river might appear clean, healthy, and far from at risk.

But in 2016, the nonprofit American Rivers, using US Forest Service data and projections, ranked the Merrimack as one of the most endangered rivers in the US due to increased levels of storm water runoff and pollution.

It's not the first time the river's health has been in jeopardy.

To learn more, we need to go back more than a century to see if its history could provide some solutions to the problems it faces today.

So could you start by taking us back 100 years and kind of describing what we would see here instead of this kind of beautiful, clear flowing river?

Sure.

Well a lot of days it probably looked just like this.

The differences are a couple.

One is that this was very much a working river.

This was an industrial river.

This is the birthplace-- you know, lower on the Merrimack is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in America.

Lowell and Lawrence and all of the people doing the textiles and all of those factories down there.

All of that meant that this was a serious working river.

All of that required power.

Power required water.

That's why all of these mills were on these rivers, is because they needed the power, the power of the water.

The Merrimack River starts up in the Pemigewasset and in Lake Winnipesaukee.

Lake Winnipesaukee was owned by the mill owners down in Lawrence and Lowell.

They manipulated the levels of this lake daily to generate power down there.

So while it might not look that different than it does today, if you were standing down closer to the river you would see it fluctuate dramatically from day to day, from hour to hour.

With no notice whatsoever, all of a sudden millions and millions of gallons could be rushing down the river.

Geographically, why was this place chosen even before?

The power.

It's actually mainly because the Merrimack River at this location had enough power to run more than 55 factories.

And the investors knew they could purchase the farmland from the farmers.

They had the power.

The canal had already been built, so they had an idea of how to move that power right to the factories.

Once the water, OK, is even on both sides of the gate, OK, the pressure is released and then they'll be able to open it by hand.

So you'll see that actually operating.

So what's interesting is that, when you think about the textile business, they came in 1821 and were able to look at the site, calculate the power of the Merrimack River at this site, hire an agent to come in and buy the land, the water rights, start digging in 1822, start building the mills.

By the fall of 1823, the Merrimack mills, which was the first mills, started producing cloth.

So today, OK, I'm going to tell you, this is a beautiful river, all right?

When I actually was born and bred here in Lowell, and you didn't come down to the river, all right?

The river was in a horrible state.

You remember as a kid?

There was dead fish, it was polluted, there was actually, you know, raw sewage coming through the system.

You did not go on the river.

If you fell in you would probably go to the hospital and get a tetanus shot, OK?

I'm just saying, it was one of the worst polluted rivers in New England.

We had these mighty rivers that were being used for industrial purposes, and they were being heavily, heavily manipulated.

Not only were they manipulated in their flow, but all the waste from all of those mills for all of the years really from that period, 100 and some years ago up until the 1950s and 60s, all of that waste had to go somewhere.

And it went right here.

So as the cities began to develop, all of their sewage began to get piped.

It had to go somewhere.

About 150 years ago, this became an open sewer.

So while it might have looked OK at the surface, there were probably times when it was pretty darn nasty.

Especially after a rainstorm, it would have been frothy with human waste.

Oh, wow.

That's a visual.

So what was a major change in people's ideology that caused them to start caring about the Merrimack River?

Well, I think this really tracks back to the environmental awakening that happened kind of in the late 50s and 60s.

There was a lot of people looking at the river that was changing colors depending on whatever they happened to be dying at the mill that day and thinking, maybe this isn't so good.

And the fact that people really couldn't swim in the river.

You know, they joked about the eyeless brown trout, which is just human waste.

So, you know, those are the jokes that were about the river.

And I think people started identifying, oh my goodness, this maybe isn't good for me.

It's not good for my family.

The water as a resource was also becoming more important for using in other kinds of industries here.

How do we use this resource in new ways as manufacturing starts to decline?

And our cities were going through urban renewal at the same time.

So all of that was making people really think differently about their neighborhoods, about the river, about their locale.

And certainly the first Earth Day and then the passage of the Clean Water Act has cemented that public sentiment into law.

And that's what we've now been implementing since 1975 or so.

We've been implementing the Clean Water Act.

And the goal of the Clean Water Act is simple, very simple.

All of the water in the state is going to be fishable and swimmable by 1982.

We're not quite there, but we're getting close.

We're not quite there?

Really?

We're not quite there.

Really.

We've cleaned up the river considerably in the last 50 years, even if we still have work to do, but why should we care that the river is at risk for more pollution?

An obvious answer may be to protect the wildlife and fish that call the river home, but more than 2 and 1/2 million people live within the Merrimack River watershed, too.

How does the river impact their lives?

For one thing, 600,000 people get their drinking water from the Merrimack and its tributaries every day.

Can you tell us a little bit about Pennichuck?

We now serve Nashua as well as part of 10 other communities.

In essence, we serve over 100,000 people out of this facility.

Our primary water supply for the Pennichuck Waterworks Company is the Pennichuck Brook watershed.

And the Pennichuck Brook eventually flows into the Merrimack River.

That's our primary source of supply.

Our backup source of supply is the Merrimack River, and that's a seasonal draw.

So how frequently do you have to draw from the Merrimack River?

Probably daily during the spring, summer, and fall months.

So, Phil, where are we?

What room are we standing in right now?

We're in a pipe gallery of our new renovated water treatment facility.

We provide water for about 160,000 residents.

A little over 10% of the state is serviced by the Manchester Waterworks.

Wow.

John, you're the forester for the Manchester Waterworks.

What is the connection between forests and the watershed?

It really all began with the forests here.

The Manchester Waterworks started water treatment back in 1871 by buying up the land around Lake Massabesic and around all the streams, tributaries, and ponds.

And at that point they were cleared lands for agriculture, mainly for sheep farming for the textile industry.

And they would buy land and plant trees as a filter to filter the rainwater that made it into Lake Massabesic for the drinking water source.

So the trees were really that first filter.

That's really the original water treatment that was done for drinking water.

And so they started managing the lands back in the 1870s, purchasing land and then converting them to forest land, and then managing that forest land for healthy forests.

And our motto is, healthy forests equal clean water.

So Massabesic, at its 24,000 acres or 42 square mile watershed, is a sub-watershed of the greater Merrimack River watershed.

And it's really rainfall that replenishes it.

Well, do you anticipate needing to find another source at some point for drinking water in Manchester?

It has been part of our long term vision at the Manchester Waterworks to look at other sources as a backup, whether it be for times of drought, but also just, you know, if there was ever anything that happened here that contaminated the water supply, to have another source.

We've been working over on the Merrimack River and we actually put a well in on the Merrimack River, and that's going to be basically a backup or complementary source to Massabesic.

Should we be worried about our drinking water resources here in the state?

I've always turned the faucet and I've always gotten water to come out.

Yeah.

It's a vital resource.

It's a source of life.

When we look at what we do, we actually provide a product that is essential to life.

So should you be concerned?

Yes.

Because it's not just about how much water you have.

What's the quality of the water?

Are you protecting that as a long term asset?

From Concord to Lowell to Newburyport, every day people rely on the Merrimack for clean drinking water.

How else does a clean river benefit people that live and work in the watershed?

As it has done for more than a century, the river continues to be an economic engine for communities large and small.

We're not manufacturing cloth here in Lowell any longer, but the waterways are used for power today.

They are.

And so explain the ways they're used for power today.

So today these waterways we have 5.6 miles of canals.

They're actually feeding into a hydroelectric plant.

They're also feeding into water turbines that are located in the basement of some of the mills here in Lowell.

And those water turbines, that at one time, was powering machinery, today is actually generating electricity that goes on to the national grid.

It's a pretty big place here.

That it is.

We're just under 500,000 square feet.

Run one can line, three bottle lines 24/7.

Yeah.

And how many employees do you all have here?

A little seasonal, but in the summer we're about 130.

In the off season we're about 110.

What's being produced out on the floor today?

Right now we're running [?

moxie ?]

on the can line is running today, Minute Maid lemonade and a variety of other flavors on the two liter.

And then one liter ginger ale and 20 ounce Fuze tea.

Oh yeah, and we saw that as we were out there kind of walking around.

And it was pretty amazing for me to see, I mean, how much goes into this.

I kind of expect there to be a lot of process, but it's a pretty amazing facility.

What I'm realizing though is the main ingredient here isn't necessarily the secret, you know, Coca-Cola recipe.

It's water.

True, yeah.

So where do you get your water from?

Yeah, water is definitely our biggest ingredient.

Our water right now comes from Lake Massabesic via Manchester Waterworks.

And like I said, it's the biggest ingredient we have here.

It's also one of the most protected that we have.

How reliable is the water in terms of like seasonality and the quality of the water?

In general, over the 12 months out of the year, it's great quality water.

How much water do you get in every day?

It varies.

Typically, to run four lines or the volume that we need to run, it's in the neighborhood of 100,000 gallons per day through our water treatment system.

It could range up to 150,000 on a big day.

That's more Dasani.

And that output, what does that look like?

How much stuff are you sending out of here a day if you're-- Product wise?

Yeah, product wise.

Yeah, we send about 100,000 cases a day.

How have you seen the business change?

Definitely the trends and things that people are interested in, hiring practices, the types of benefits that you need to offer to attract people, those have all changed a lot over time.

While we're on the topic of benefits, I think one of the neat things about being able to work here is that, because we are near the river, we have access.

During a renovation we put a dock on the Turkey River, which feeds just behind our building and feeds right into the Merrimack.

So on your lunch break you can paddle around or even paddle to work.

Sometimes we have paddle to work days, which a lot of fun.

And you can really enjoy the natural beauty that we have.

And I think it's so easily forgotten that the Merrimack cuts through the heart of Concord and it's such a beautiful resource.

Oh, absolutely.

Explain a little bit more about the boat to work day.

So we go-- it's about 5 and 1/2 miles upriver.

We rent the boats for people.

Some people bring their own, but we do offer to rent them for people who don't have them, and then we just kind of paddle downriver, and it's about an hour and 15 minutes or so.

We take our time.

We go past the capitol dome and see some wildlife.

You can almost always count on seeing a blue heron or something like that.

And it's just a lot of fun.

It's a cool way to arrive to work.

I wish I could do it every day.

Yeah, that's really neat.

So our towns and cities rely on a healthy watershed for drinking water and economic reasons.

After hearing about Amanda's paddle to work day, it made me wonder-- is recreation an important resource?

[music playing] So what we're all about is creating community through conservation, and we do that in a variety of ways.

It might be through creating trail access or trail connectivity.

We do it through environmental education.

Can you describe to me what we're standing on right here?

Sure, this is the Concord River Greenway.

And we're just upriver from Jolene Governor Park, and you're looking at a historic stone arch bridge.

Oh, cool.

So the Concord River Greenway is a pretty critical link in the city's trail network and actually the region's trail network.

Is it relatively easy for people to access these green areas or the river?

How far do people generally have to travel from their home or from where they work to get to a place?

The city is fortunate to have over 90 parks.

Generally speaking, you want to think about trying to make every park walkable, which means you need to be able to get there by not walking more than a quarter of a mile.

Then you also go down the river.

You raft the river every spring?

We do.

We're really fortunate on the Concord here that we have class three and four white water.

It's also a really unique run in that the rapids are a boom, boom, boom.

There's not a lot of downtime in between.

So it's a pretty thrilling trip.

People don't expect it in the middle of a city.

So when you're paddling or rafting down the river, what do you see?

Really abundant wildlife.

You see this green corridor.

So you're not up against buildings?

No, you're not up against buildings.

Until you get downtown and then it's kind of like the Grand Canyon or the Red Canyon.

You end up going through these high walls.

Brick buildings.

Yeah.

The high, historic brick walls when the river was channelized.

But up here you go through this wonderful green quarter that people don't expect, so it's just beautiful.

[music playing] What other changes have you seen along the river in your 22 years of working along its banks?

Probably more use.

We now have pontoon boats and fishing boats that go up the river.

Of course all the paddlers.

But not just paddlers from here, but people putting their own boats on.

People swimming, people tubing.

So in the last-- we've been here 25 years.

So in the last 15 years, we've seen a steady increase in just people using the river, enjoying the beaches, enjoying the scenery, enjoying the hiking trails and then swimming after hiking the trails.

So just river usage has just grown dramatically.

[music playing] The Merrimack in this neck of the woods is a pretty big water.

It is tidally influenced up this far.

And, you know, it's quite a bit different than the upper reaches in New Hampshire.

So it's a spot that is super important for a variety of recreational uses, lots of fishing, lots of boating.

But it's big water.

So aside from recreational uses, what other ways do people use the river down here?

It's an important source of drinking water for some communities.

But it's important as a scenic resource.

It's important for communities that have redeveloped their downtowns.

Places that have had their backs turned to the river for generations are building riverwalks and waterfront trails.

And again, it's that intersection of economic development, recreational use, and it's all predicated upon having a clean, healthy river.

[music playing] [inaudible] Are you ready?

Yeah.

Take a break.

Take a break.

Whoo!

Yeah, yeah.

We got her.

We got her.

Come on in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh.

Good job, everyone.

Whoo!

As Chris just said, economic development and recreation are predicated upon having a clean, healthy river.

Up to this point in my journey, the river and its tributaries appear to be nothing but clean.

We use it for drinking water, recreating, and running businesses.

So can a river with this much to offer be at risk?

The Industrial Revolution has gone elsewhere.

Most of the manufacturing that happens here, while a lot of it is still done on the Merrimack River, you know, the redevelopment of the mills in Manchester and Nashua and Lawrence and Lowell, it's no longer as messy.

They don't use the river as their open sewer, and that's the other big change, is that we now have plumbing.

And that plumbing goes to a wastewater treatment plant.

And we have a wastewater treatment plant that does amazing, amazing work to take that human waste and turn it into really clean water.

In fact, sometimes I hear some of the wastewater treatment plant operators complain when they look at the stringent requirements placed upon them.

They say, do you understand that your river is making my waste dirty?

So they are pumping out lots of really clean water.

It's high tech.

And we have some of the best operators in these wastewater treatment plants anywhere in the country.

They win awards all the time.

In the Merrimack watershed, there are 46 plants that do a great job, most of the time.

Of the 46 plants, six of them-- two in New Hampshire and four in Massachusetts-- struggled to treat the large volume of raw sewage combined with storm runoff that inundates their aging infrastructure during heavy rain events.

To avoid having sewage backup into homes and businesses, the plants discharge what they can't treat into the river in what is called a Combined Sewer Overflow, or CSO.

Every year, upwards of 3/4 of a billion gallons of raw sewage is discharged into the Merrimack during CSO events.

When a CSO happens, bacteria such as e. coli can remain in the river for up to 48 to 72 hours, threatening the health of people, wildlife, and even our pets.

And climate change is causing more frequent CSO events, so on some days the river is cleaner than others.

One of the predictions of climate change, and I think that most people would say it's already here, is that we're getting more of our precipitation in fewer events.

So we're getting more and more of the big rainstorms, the really devastating rainstorms, the kinds of things that break dams and devour the banks of the river.

Those are happening more frequently.

And with that rain, with those intense rainstorms, comes more pollution off the land.

With an increase in intense rains and storm runoff, we will see an increase in CSOs.

Eliminating CSOs completely will cost municipalities hundreds of millions of dollars to update their infrastructure.

Here's the thing-- even if we spend millions of dollars to put an end to CSOs, the Merrimack watershed faces a bigger challenge that even our water treatment plants would not be able to fix.

Keeping sewage out of the river is part of the solution, but it won't clean it up completely.

So if this is the case, what is the biggest challenge the river faces in the future?

And what are our biggest threats to water quality?

Surface waters here in the state.

Sure.

By far the largest threat today of surface water quality is stormwater runoff.

So stormwater runoff is the water that reaches paved surfaces, some of the times even gravel surfaces, and our lawn's included in that, and it reaches the rainfalls and it washes off whatever stuff happens to be on those surfaces.

So on our roads there's, you know, little bits of your tires.

There's little bits of your brakes off of your car.

There's all the just grime.

There's atmospheric deposition coming down, so we have sulfides and nitrates that are falling from the air that come from other places.

We have mercury that comes from the burning of fossil fuels that falls on our surfaces and washes into our waters.

So all of those things contribute to us having poor water quality as a result of some of that stormwater runoff.

Stormwater runoff is a form of non-point source pollution.

As rainfall and snowmelt move over and through the ground, it carries sediment from improperly managed construction sites, animal waste and pesticides from farms, petroleum products and salts from roads, toxic chemicals from manufacturing sites, and fertilizer and bacteria from our homes and yards.

Before wastewater treatment plants existed, forests were the only resource communities could rely on to filter runoff.

Forests hold back natural and human-made pollutants from contaminating water sources, including lakes, rivers, and groundwater.

Unlike a forest, an impervious surface such as a paved parking lot can't keep pollutants from spilling into a storm drain and ultimately the river.

The rainwater that falls in the watershed, say on a mountainside in Franconia Notch, or a farm in Penacook, or on I-93 in Lawrence, all affects the Merrimack in some way.

Salt is a huge issue.

So the way we're salting our roads, and the demand that we have as our God-given right as Americans to get to Walmart on the absolute worst conditions possible, maybe we should rethink that a little bit.

Maybe we can drive a little slower when it's winter.

Those are some of the things we have to think about, because we have water bodies that are literally toxic with salt in this state.

It's gotten deep in the groundwater, it's slowly seeping out, and those waters no longer support fish.

Probably the two biggest threats that I see to drinking water is developments, whether it be commercial or residential developments, and roading and roadways, and they usually come hand-in-hand.

And what you get with-- and a lot of that is nutrients loading into the brooks and streams and eventually into the lake.

And those nutrients will feed algae and plant life, and you'll get an imbalance of too much plant life in your lake, and it'll become like a marsh.

And so being shallow, Massabesic is vulnerable to becoming a marsh.

History has a way of repeating itself in the Merrimack watershed, as this is not the first time the river has faced runoff issues.

120 years ago, when the lower Merrimack was the backbone of America's burgeoning Industrial Revolution, the forests in the upper watershed were facing threats that would ultimately change the outlook of eastern forests forever.

New Hampshire has such a diverse landscape.

We've seen developed areas in the southern part of the state, and now we're here in the middle of the forest.

How are all these places connected?

That's a great question.

I mean, forests ultimately have a close relationship with the history of the Merrimack River and especially the upper Pemigewasset River.

Because if not for the river, the forest would not have been saved in the first place.

We're walking through a floodplain forest along the edge of the river that's the central artery of New Hampshire.

But if you look into the history, you realize that the river gave rise to what's now our national forest.

When did that happen?

Oh.

[laugh] So you have to go back to the turn of the century and understand that logging in the white mountains and the subsequent fires from clear cuts led to erosion, and that affected the river in.

really profound ways.

Through the removal of the tree canopy and the baking of the soil and then heavy rains and erosion, resulted in silltation of the river.

And that changed the hydrology of the Merrimack River.

And in fact, there was a series of devastating fires in the White Mountains in the 1880s and 1890, and then the worst year was 1903.

[music playing] High waters inflict 10 deaths and huge losses on New England.

Rivers burst with waves of rain and melting snows.

The Merrimack closes scores of mills, making thousands jobless.

There was a series of devastating floods that actually shut down the largest textile mill in the world, Amoskeag Manufacturing in Manchester, New Hampshire.

And 10,000 workers were laid off and the mill was closed for two months.

And so the river is behaving erratically.

There's floods in the spring, there's droughts in the summertime, and they didn't have a reliable source of water.

And then when it started becoming unpredictable, people started scratching their heads and wondering.

And jobs were being lost.

And jobs are being lost, yeah.

And mills were being shut down.

People got together to protect the power of the river for economic interests, for commerce, for their livelihoods.

And as a result, they set aside that land in the headwaters that is now one of 40 eastern national forests that traces its origins to the struggle to protect the water power for New England.

Wow.

So when the White Mountain National Forest burned to the ground, it still had seeds in the soil.

The forest was able to regrow, but what you're saying is that this threat is insidious in nature because the human impacts that we are having along the river are a little bit more permanent.

I think so.

And, you know, it would seem that the forest was devastated by the logging and the fires and the erosion.

And the forest was certainly fragile, but it was also incredibly resilient.

I think our predecessors would be amazed to see this, you know, cloak of forest land on 790,000 acres.

It's all public land that's owned by the US Forest Service.

It's, you know, a gem of northern New Hampshire.

And that impact on the river is keeping that water clean and cold and predictable in terms of the way that the forest releases water into the watershed.

But in the southern part of the state, you know, that's not the case.

The lands and the communities around the Merrimack are not like the lands of the White Mountain National Forest.

And so the lands in the southern part of the watershed are changing permanently, even as we've got this victory we've protected the headwaters.

[music playing] The loss of an acre of forest wouldn't cause irreparable harm to the watershed, but the cumulative impact of these losses over many years paints a concerning picture.

By 2030, the US Forest Service projects that the Merrimack watershed will lose more forested acres than any other watershed in the country.

Between 1990 and 2010, approximately 100,000 acres of forest in the watershed were replaced with roads, parking lots, and rooftops.

And by 2030, the amount of land projected to change from rural in character to urban or suburban could surpass 400,000 acres.

This rise in housing density puts the watershed at risk for more runoff, which threatens water quality and the health of people and wildlife.

One notable change in the lower Merrimack is the loss of some of New England's oldest farmland to development.

Although agriculture produces some non-point source pollution in the form of animal waste and fertilizers, farms in this part of the watershed have some of the most fertile soils in the region, contributing greatly to our local food economy.

Does losing farmland affect the river in the same way that losing our forests does?

The Merrimack Valley has a tremendous number of farms that are still in existence.

In fact, some of the oldest, longest, continuously operating farms in the country are right here in the Merrimack Valley, which is really a neat aspect of here and one of the things that we really want to try to help preserve.

It's very much part and parcel of the history here, the culture, and the majority of that land is not preserved and is very threatened.

It's flat, it's open, it's easily developable.

A lot of these farmers don't have successors.

So let me see if I get this right.

You're just trying to keep farm land in operation.

And you want to ensure that it's always-- that it stays that way?

What's the alternative?

What would the alternative look like?

The alternative, if preservation isn't a part of the picture, is development, and you see that happening over and over.

Every landowner I talk with who has more than 10 acres is getting phone calls from developers asking them if they want to sell their land.

Farmers love their land.

Lots of people love their land, but farmers especially.

And the farmers that I work with, this is family land.

This is land that has been in their name for generations.

And it's not only their livelihood, it's who they are, and they don't want to develop it.

And they want to see it stay in farming.

And I think having active, productive farms is key to protecting the river as well.

I mean, I know that there is concern about runoff from farmland polluting the rivers, but I think a healthy, sustainable farm can be much healthier for the river than subdivision.

A lot of the farms in the Merrimack River Valley have a tremendous amount of forest land that they keep intact because they use these forests.

These are active, productive forests.

They have mills on their property.

They harvest timber, they sell wood, they sell firewood.

That's sort of an accessory use to their farm.

And so protecting these farms also protects significant amount of woodlands, which also plays a huge role in protecting water quality and keeping the water around here clean.

[music playing] In Merrimack, Belknap, and Hillsborough Counties, the three biggest counties in the New Hampshire portion of the watershed, the rate of population growth is nearly two times greater than the New England average.

Businesses are thriving in the region, and people want to live where there is access to natural resources like lakes, rivers, and forests.

If this region wants to continue to thrive in the future, don't we need some development?

So the watershed is actually quite forested still.

It's still intact.

Right now we have about 17% to 18% of the watershed is developed.

So what does that mean?

Does that mean like houses, parking lots, or?

Correct.

Correct.

Cities.

You know, Nashua and Manchester and Lowell and Lawrence, you know, that developed area where the concentration of people is the highest.

But if you come back out into the watershed, the watershed is much larger than the river itself and you're dealing with an area that is largely forest.

Development due to the increased transportation, I-93 is being opened up, being enlarged.

People can get further and further up and away from the cities for their living, and that's resulting in more and more fragmentation of the forest.

And we're seeing that throughout the watershed.

What is your projection?

Or what do you see happening for development in the Merrimack Valley?

I think there will be steady growth.

I think the southern part of the state-- I think you're going to see those communities that are actively engaged in economic development are going to thrive, and you're going to see smaller towns start to thin out and die out.

And we're seeing an extremely low vacancy rate for rental units and a very high demand, which drives up costs, so people are paying a lot of money for rental units.

And in the housing market, so for people trying to buy a home right now, there's not a lot available in the lower price range.

But when you think about jobs in New Hampshire, we need people to fill those jobs and to keep up with the economic growth that New Hampshire has seen.

We have one of the lowest unemployment rates.

So for businesses to thrive in New Hampshire if they want to grow, they need to find people to work here.

And so if people are having a hard time in a challenge with housing, which is what goes hand-in-hand with working, they're not going to be able to come here.

And so businesses aren't going to be able to grow and it's going to create a slowed economy in New Hampshire, eventually.

More than just CSOs and non-point source pollution are threatening the watershed.

Cancer causing toxins known as PFASs and PFOAs have been found in drinking water sources.

Hydroelectric dams blocked the passage of anadromous fish, including salmon and shad, and microplastics are harming human and wildlife populations in profound ways.

It can be overwhelming, but as history has shown, the Merrimack watershed has faced challenges that it has overcome before.

The big question moving forward is, how can we protect the river?

The most important thing that we can do to really start to understand our resource is to go touch it.

They should come down.

They should look at it.

They should get in it.

Because then they'll care about it.

When you're out talking to people, maybe not in this area but where they're comfortable in schools or elsewhere, do you find that they get it?

Do they care about the water here?

Oh, I believe they do.

I believe they do.

I mean, the people that-- you know, water is becoming more and more of a concern for the public with different challenges that have come forward things.

Like PFOAs that have been coming up in the newspaper, water getting contaminated.

People understand that we need water for life, you know, that we can't exist without water.

Assuming that there's going to be additional development here in the Merrimack Valley, how should that look?

Start with recognizing that the Merrimack River itself is a tremendous asset to attract families, to attract businesses to come here, because it adds to that quality of life.

Recreationally, scenically, everything else.

I think one of the key challenges is making sure that there's some continuity between communities.

It won't do any good in the long run if Concord protects it's part of the river but then we found out Hooksett didn't.

The river is more than just one community.

The valley's larger than just Concord.

So I think there needs to be a regional approach to how we plan the future of all development.

And I think there'll be a lot of different voices from people who want to protect the river and keep it completely undeveloped, to developers who would like to line it with condominiums.

There's a balance.

The decision making should err on the side of caution.

So hands down, if you look across all the literature, the best possible thing you can do is to have a buffer.

The bigger the buffer, the better.

So about 100 foot buffer will help to protect water quality to a significant extent.

So really that first 100 feet is really critical for water quality.

And what happens in that 100 feet?

Nature.

Nature happens.

But really what happens is that you have all of the activity of the vegetation, you have the microbial activity in the soil, you have the trees that are intercepting the rain with all of its pollution that's in the rain and the snow.

It's all being intercepted.

It's all being used up and recycled, and so all of that's happening on the land next to the water.

That's protecting water quality.

If you really want to protect for wildlife, then you need to go further.

If you really want to protect for things that are, you know, migratory species, you need a bigger buffer.

If you really want to make sure that you have unfragmented forests-- that is forests for things that need a lot of habitat, things like bears and some of the big raptors and some of that kind of stuff-- that you need even bigger areas.

So depending on what it is that you love about that river-- I happen to love the fact that river otters come here in the winter.

I love that.

I love the fact that there's bald eagles that fly around here.

You don't have the river otters, you don't have the bald eagles, unless you have conserved lands.

You don't have good water quality unless you have conserved land.

So it's really key-- oh, there's fish flopping around in the river right there.

Oh, yeah.

You don't have any of that.

You don't have that unless we have conservation land, because that's really the filters.

That's the filters that keep this water clean.

So we're indebted to all of the wonderful people who've come before us, who tried to protect the land along these rivers.

If that had not happened, if we had development right up to the river itself, we would have way worse water quality.

We would not be able to love these resources the way we do.

So it's really important that we keep what remaining green space we have, as well as it's important, from a wildlife perspective and from a water quality perspective, to tie all of these conservation areas together so that they're not just, you know, islands in amongst pavement.

That we have nice contiguous areas of green to be able to both recreate in as well as to protect both our wildlife and our water quality.

So I think conservation plays an incredibly important role in all of this.

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is the coordinator of the Conservation Partnership, and that is a group of organizations, agencies, and regional planning commissions that came together about coming up on about 10 years ago.

And this is the Merrimack Conservation Partnership?

Correct.

33 organizations, including agency, state agencies, from both Mass and New Hampshire, conservation groups from both Mass and New Hampshire, and then also regional planning commissions, all working towards a common goal of improving water quality in the Merrimack River.

What are the partners within the partnership doing right now to protect some of this land?

So the partners really are in land conservation mode.

Much of the work has been done to develop the conservation plan that identifies the most critical lands that would, if conserved, would protect the water quality in the Merrimack River.

And the last, I would say, 10 years, we've been really working on implementing that plan, conserving those areas that have been previously identified as the most important to protect.

So what if New Hampshire doesn't make way or doesn't make it more accessible for people to live here?

What happens?

Oh, I think the economy will certainly feel that.

We won't be able to continue thriving.

So I think it's important to cater to everybody so we can continue having a great place to live and having the services that the aging population needs, but also making it a great place for the younger generation to live and to want to live and to afford to live.

And so what are some solutions and maybe some sustainable solutions to that?

In the city center, so when we're thinking about Nashua, Manchester, Concord, even, we have to be creative and think about creative solutions, which is already happening.

When we go out into little more rural areas, we need to look at the land use regulations and see if they're supporting more cluster development, more dense development.

If we can get smaller lots, smaller homes, more people on less land, I think that is what is going to help not only with hopefully some affordability but also lessen the impact of having to have two acres for one home.

And some communities are doing really well with that, and others I think need to catch up a little bit.

And I think we can learn from each other and try to be better and support each other through change.

And I think we need to evolve and think dynamically.

[music playing] Way back when the river was really heavily polluted you could obviously see pollutants flowing into them and the river was a different color.

We were talking about how, you know, clear that-- how obvious that was.

It was also probably really, really expensive.

I would assume that if you're able to conserve forests, you know, higher in the watershed that maybe the cost isn't as great in trying to clean up a river that is polluted, if you can kind of get ahead of that and just ensure the water is clean.

Right.

The key to that is, as you say, if you conserve higher in the watershed, that water already coming down through the watershed is clean.

You know, the communities that are having to drink from that water are having to treat it less, are having to-- in some cases are still drinking surface water that is coming into the river.

But the facilities that are needed to be built can be avoided if it's not as polluted as it comes down.

Businesses that are along the river, you know, they're not having to have heavily treated water.

You're having communities that want to have attractive places to go, want to have river sidewalks, but if you have a polluted river there's not going to be the attractiveness for people to either live next to it, recreate on it.

All of that drives an economy here in the lower part of the watershed.

That is very important.

Clean water filters into more than just the drinking water.

It filters into the economy in a whole bunch of ways.

Yeah, and the livelihood of everybody who is living in the watershed.

With proper planning, forests are the best resource the developing Merrimack Region can harness to filter our air and water, offer recreation and economic opportunities, maintain stable wildlife habitat, and combat climate change.

Maintaining healthy forests is the most important action we can take to turn a river that's at risk into a river that was at risk.

Today's business leaders and conservation interests should be working together about what this watershed is going to look like 100 years from now.

So what can the landscape, the natural landscape, do for the health of the river that we as humans cannot?

If we can let it do its thing as a watershed, it will continue to filter water and provide habitat for wildlife and protect the water quality so that we can continue to fish and boat and drink and use the Merrimack River, you know, as the economic lifeblood of our communities.

If we act now, can the Merrimack continue to sustain us?

Can we save it?

[MUSIC - RIVER SISTER, "RIVER BREEZE"] Let's call this real friends.

Let's call this real friends.

Let's call this good.

I won't be fighting to let your light in and call this good.

Let's call this love, too.

Let's call this love, too.

Let's call this good.

So don't be frightened to let your light in and cal it good.

And call it river breeze, river breeze good.

And call it river breeze, river breeze good.

There is a temple for the gentle.

I'll call it good.

There is a garden to grow your heart in.

So start at the beginning.

What do you mean swimming around [inaudible]??

Well, there's always garbage.

There's always garbage in the water.

And not only garbage, other stuff that you don't even want to mention, but used to kick hard and swim hard.

Swish it around so that it wouldn't be right in front of you.

I'm the third generation on this farm.

The fourth generation is very active, and the fifth generation, they're farming many, many acres with their [?

talk of ?]

[?

choice.

?]

You know, the 1,100 acres we farm, everybody will tell you the land along the Merrimack River, it's the best land to be farming.

What's nice about kayak fishing is I like to say it makes you more intimate with your fishing.

You're not sitting up on a boat.

It's not sitting in a boat.

It's quiet.

There's no motor.

You talk about seeing a lot of wildlife.

Oh, look at the colors.

Oh, that's a beautiful fish.

I'm getting a picture of that.

That's a pumpkin seed.

Thank you, fish!

So we're standing in what we call the DNM, the Dean and Main Building.

And what's behind us is the fly wheel from that pump.

It was built in 1900 and ran up until about 1975, then it would pump about seven million gallons a day into the distribution system in the city of Nashua.

Wow.

Yeah.

I think it's definitely priority to increase access for recreation to all of our waterways, but the city in some places turns its back to the rivers.

And so we want the city to be more facing the river.

We want to increase visual access, physical access to the rivers and ponds and other waterways.

When we first started doing this, a lot of people, the classic question is, how's the water?

I heard you can't even dip your big toe in it.

You'll get sick.

There's industrial waste and dyes from fabric in it.

That all went the way of the dinosaur after the Clean Water Act in 1975.

And I used to call them the elephants of water quality.

Big giant pipes, you can see them, you can go after them pretty readily.

It's kind of easy to concentrate your resources on something big.

But now that those have been taken away, we're kind of dealing with what I call the ants of water quality.

We're ants.

River breeze.

River breeze, good.

[inaudible],, return your genie's wish and call it good.

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