Batten Kill Watershed Alliance
Strategic Plan
May 15, 2003

The Mission of the Batten Kill Watershed Alliance is to coordinate, educate, and promote stewardship for the benefit and enhancement of the Batten Kill watershed in the states of Vermont and New York.

The Batten Kill, also called the Battenkill River in New York, and Dionondehowa by Native Americans, has its origins in the Green and Taconic Mountains of Vermont.  The river is approximately 53 miles long and its watershed area consists of approximately 200 square miles in Vermont and 250 square miles in New York.  The river flows generally south through Bennington County in Vermont, until it reaches Arlington, where it turns west to enter New York.  In New York it takes a serpentine route generally west through Washington County until it enters the Hudson River at Clarks Mills. 

The river begins in earnest when a number of tributaries converge near Manchester, VT.  The headwaters are forested, but that gives way to developed land in Manchester, then alternating farming, forest, and rural homes until Greenwich, NY.  From the Vermont mountains to the first NY dam at Center Falls, just above Greenwich, the river is typically free running with pools and riffles.  From Center Falls to the Hudson River, the river is a series of long stretches of slow water backed up behind the dams, followed by short riffles below each dam.

The river is known nationally as a wild trout stream essentially from the Dufresne Dam in Manchester, VT downstream to Center Falls, NY.  Brook trout were the native species, but the predominant game fish is now the brown trout, which was introduced from Europe a century ago.  There is only one dam remaining in Vermont, while in New York the river is dammed at seven locations.  Aside from occasional population centers, the river flows through peaceful and scenic valleys and provides habitat for trout, wildlife, water craft, hikers, bathers, and nature lovers.  The river has felt, and continues to be affected by, the pressures of development, land use, increased human presence, and recreational use.

The basic strategy of the Batten Kill Watershed Alliance is to achieve the objective of good stewardship of the Batten Kill watershed through education and outreach, responsible river use and land use, restoration and conservation of the riparian habitat, understanding and protecting water quality and aquatic habitat, and to build an organization that can sustain these efforts into the future.  Our activities can be classified by these strategic categories and sorted in terms of urgency and priority.  We also need to determine who will engage in activities, with which partners, and when.  Attached is a list of activities that represents an attempt to sort the activities in these ways, and a sketch of a time line for scheduling the operations over the coming year.

This strategic list of activities is the result of a long process.  First, the series of meetings that led to the formation of the Alliance established the mission of good stewardship through identifying and seeking to solve river problems, educating the public and collecting of feedback, cooperating with all relevant groups and agencies on river projects, and serving as a clearinghouse for river conditions, studies, and activities.  Over the past year and a half the Alliance has sponsored public meetings.  A number of the meetings offered special presentations of river-related topics.  Then this past fall the group sponsored a series of four public meetings throughout the watershed in order to gather public input about the problems of the river and the activities that community members determined should be the priorities of the organization.  In many ways the suggestions gathered at these meetings confirmed existing known concerns, but they also served to focus attention on particular aspects of the river's problems.  The objectives and activities listed in this Strategic Plan reflect the priorities of community members.

The Batten Kill and its tributaries have historically been a dominant force in determining the geography of the landscape and the economic activities of watershed communities.  One hundred years ago the waterpower of the streams was the primary economic aspect of the river, along with the fertile floodplains for farming.  Nowadays the economic importance of the river may lie primarily in its recreational and scenic capacities, but it is still the dominant characteristic of watershed communities.

One way to see the Batten Kill system is as a form of natural capital that produces a flow of products and services: recreation in fishing, canoeing, swimming and hiking, flood control, water supply, water quality, scenery, property values, habitat, and so forth.  The mission and goals of the Alliance are intended to ensure that this productive asset is well-managed and that good stewardship is employed.  We must seek to prevent the degradation of this natural capital and invest in increasing its productivity.  We must not lose sight of the fact that the river system is part of the larger natural environment within which all of our lives take place, and that our activities can affect the system in positive and negative ways.

This process of investment can be seen as occurring in several ways.  One is the direct investment in the physical conditions of the river through projects like bank restoration and stabilization or planting vegetated buffer zones.  Another is the indirect investment in knowledge and understanding of the river system.  This can lead to changes in behavior that ultimately improve the condition and productivity of the asset.  An example of this would be educating landowners and river users about river-friendly behavior.  Still another is to see some activities as investment in stewardship capacities that can eventually serve to protect and enhance the condition of the river.  An example of this would be the development of a sustainable BKWA for the purposes of Vermont's and New York=s watershed management initiatives.

We are therefore developing a strategic plan for investing in the most important natural and economic system of our communities.

1. To develop an effective education and outreach program to involve and provide information to users of the resource, stakeholders, community, agencies, businesses, and interested members of the public.
2. To reduce erosion and flooding, and restore and protect riparian buffers.
3. To promote balanced and responsible river use.
4. To improve water quality, aquatic habitat, and wild trout populations.
5. To develop the Alliance into a strong organization well into the future.

The following is a time line for 2003 scheduled activities.

Time Line

Acronyms in ( ) denote potential partners: ALL=all appropriate agencies; BCCD=Bennington County Conservation District; BCRC=Bennington County Regional Commission; B=businesses;  E=educational institutions; FI=funding institutions; LG=local governments; LO=local organizations; NAE=non-agency experts; NRCS=Natural Resources Conservation Service; NY DEC=NY Department of Environmental Conservation, all departments; OCO=other conservation organizations; OWO=other watershed organizations; RP=riparian land owners; TU=Trout Unlimited; US FS=US Forest Service, Green Mtn National Forest; USF&W=US Fish & Wildlife Service; V=volunteers; VT ANR=VT Agency of Natural Resources, all departments; WCSWCD=Washington County Soil & Water Conservation District