Newport This Week

ALT Enters Third Decade of Conservation



Amadeo Leo with a scavenger hunt card from 2019’s Family Day event. (Photo by Richard W. Dionne Jr.)

Amadeo Leo with a scavenger hunt card from 2019’s Family Day event. (Photo by Richard W. Dionne Jr.)

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Aquidneck Land Trust (ALT). At the organization’s annual meeting, held on Feb. 6 at the Atlantic Beach Resort, ALT welcomed new board members Bill Corcoran, Mark Marosits, Steve McInnis and Lois Vaughan, while thanking Nancy Jamison, Emlen Drayton, Stephen MacGillivray and Susan Ruf for their service over the past years. Awards were given to winners of the 2019 art and writing contest and a short conservation video was aired.

This year, the trust conserved just under 10 acres, bringing the total to 2,605 acres of land conserved since 1990, equating to more than 10 percent of Aquidneck Island. These new properties include the 6.2-acre Allen property in Middletown, and the 3.68-acre historic Blue Garden property in Newport.

The organization is also working to conserve and expand 13-acre Ballard Park with a 3.67-acre parcel currently owned by the Ballard family. A town property, Ballard Park was never conserved under the stringent rules of a land trust easement. Thanks to a collaboration between the Ballard family, the City of Newport and the Aquidneck Land Trust, and following a potential $100,000 grant from DEM, additional plots will combine to create almost 80 contiguous acres of protected land. Although the other plots in the easement will not be open to the public, the original Ballard Park land will remain public.

An image of the Glen Farm Property ALT will be protecting this year.

An image of the Glen Farm Property ALT will be protecting this year.

Two properties owned and conserved by ALT opened to the public this year. After securing Spruce Acres Farm, which straddles the Portsmouth and Middletown border and includes the 1.5-mile Gewirz Trail, which took 18 months to make accessible, the property opened to the public in December 2018 thanks to contributions from both towns and private donors. On Feb. 19, during the Newport Winter Festival, ALT will host a free family day at Spruce Acres from 1 to 3 p.m., including a trail walk, scavenger hunt and face-painting.

Little Creek, a 15.3-acre ALTowned site, opened in September with a new half-mile hiking trail that is connected to ALT’s existing 10-mile Sakonnet Greenway Trail. Benches, picnic tables and a permeable parking area has been installed, and the trust hopes to add a boardwalk into the wetlands.

 

 

Their next project is to conserve 7.5 acres on historic Glen Farm in Portsmouth, which may include a walking loop off Glen Farm Road.

“It’s part of this giant quadrant of land that is heading from East Main Road to the Sakonnet with an iconic view scape,” said Gretchen Markert, communications and outreach manager. “It will be accessible on Glen Farm Road, a frequently walked road that connects Glen Road and Sandy Point Road.”

This fiscal year, support from the van Beuren Charitable Foundation and a private donor allowed ALT to bring in Sasaki & Associates to conduct an analysis of the island, using historic data to project possible conservation outcomes over the next 30 years. The results predicted that 100 percent of the unprotected open space will be developed in that time, adding nearly 5,000 homes and 8,000 cars to the roads.

ALT is the oldest accredited land trust in Rhode Island. They are currently seeking their five-year renewal from the Land Trust Accreditation Program, and welcome public input on the application.

Among the trust’s many educational efforts, those revolving around clean drinking water have been notable. Markert said that aside from private wells, all of the drinking water on Aquidneck Island comes from nine reservoirs, two of which are located off-island. Although all drinking water is fully treated, the DEM has labeled all nine of these water sources impaired. Educational programming at Rogers High last year taught students how runoff carrying fertilizer, road salt, dog waste and other common pollutants impair not only reservoirs, but also the bay.

“One of the key messages of our outreach to the environmental science classes is explaining what a watershed is and that our actions impact our drinking and recreational waters,” Markert said.

The program, underwritten by the William H. Donner Foundation, hopes this year to include Portsmouth High School in the environmental science classes on climate change and sea level rise, and students will make three-dimensional models of possible solutions to these issues. A local scientist will visit the classrooms, and provide a free evening lecture that is open to the public. Last year, Dr. Martha McConnell gave the lectures, and this year, Dr. Kelton McMann will have the honor.

“They are so creative with no restrictions other than their own creativity and some art supplies,” Markert said. “I think this is a great way of educating the next generation, which has some problems to solve, and also a way to get them thinking about ways to apply solutions and think about their own behaviors and how it relates to keeping our island as resilient and clean as possible.”

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