Fishy phenom: First Taunton Mill River herring run in two centuries caught on camera 4-20-18

Fishy phenom: First Taunton Mill River herring run in two centuries caught on camera

Taunton Gazette

By Charles Winokoor
Taunton Gazette Staff Reporter

Posted Apr 20, 2018 at 10:44 AM
Updated Apr 21, 2018 at 9:42 AM

TAUNTON — It took a week before a herring fish heading north from Mill River to Sabbatia Lake made its presence known to Sara Turner.

"We got the photo April 12 at 3 p.m.," said Turner, a diadromous fish biologist working in the New Bedford office of the Division of Marine Fisheries, which is part of the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game.

The word diadromous refers to species of fish that spend most of their life in salt water, but each year instinctively swim upstream against the current into fresh water in order to fertilize eggs and propagate.

Turner, 35, says the fishy snapshot came courtesy of an underwater camera installed April 4 at the Morey's Bridge dam on Bay Street.

The image, she says, is proof that a fish ladder installed in 2013 at the dam — which controls water from Sabbatia Lake as it flows south under the concrete bridge into Mill River — is working.

Since that day, Turner said, as many as 10 more herring heading upstream in search of spawning ground have been caught on video swimming up the Denil fish ladder — which consists of a narrow, rectangular chute with hardwood baffles that act as a stairway of sorts.

That's a significant environmental development, considering it's been 200 years since a major herring run traveled north up an unobstructed Mill River from the ocean bays of Mount Hope and Narragansett via Three Mile River.

Herring can choose either Taunton or Nemasket waterways

For many years the busiest herring run in Massachusetts has been in the Nemasket River.

The Nemasket is a Taunton River tributary that flows south 11 miles from the Bridgewater/Middleboro line, until it empties into the multi-pond Assawompsett Pond complex in Lakeville and Middleboro.

Four of the ponds within the complex provide drinking water to Taunton and New Bedford.

River restoration

The installation of the Morey's dam camera came nearly three months after the third of three antiquated dam structures on Mill River — all of which harked back to an era when river water was harvested to provide electricity for mills and factories — was dismantled.

The elimination of the dams and spillways was part of a 12-year state project called Mill River Restoration.

The multi-agency effort was initiated in 2006, one year after a privately owned dam spanning the Whittenton Pond section of Mill River caused a media sensation — when authorities at the time said it came close to collapsing after heavy and extended rains.

The Dam Crisis of 2005 at one point caused officials to urge 2,000 residents living near the river to evacuate their homes.

It also spurred the state's Office of Dam Safety to take measures to ensure that such an event didn't happen again.

The dam-safety office of the Department of Conservation and Recreation the next year declared the Morey's Bridge dam unsafe and ordered it be left open permanently.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation eventually spent more than $4 million to install a new bridge and dam with fish ladder. That project was completed in 2013.

Restoring Mill River to its natural, dam-free state included the removal in 2012 and 2013, respectively, of the circa-1818 Hopewell Mills dam near Taunton State Hospital, and the rock-and-boulder spillway that temporarily replaced the 1832 Whittenton Pond dam.

The last of the three to be torn apart was the West Britannia dam adjacent the former Reed and Barton silver-manufacturing company, which by then was closed after filing bankruptcy.

Turner says Acuity Management, which bought the property in 2015, contributed cash to help offset the cost of removing the dam, but she was unable to say how much.

An email sent to an Acuity associate was not immediately returned.

Turner said an underwater camera was installed two years ago near the West Britannia dam to confirm whether herring were present. She said as many as 100 at various times could be seen.

Besides removing troublesome and potentially dangerous dams, the Mill River Restoration project has created what's been described as a meadow-like floodplain — with native plants and trees being planted, in order to replicate the way the riverbank looked before dams were built.

It's also opening up more than 30 river miles and 400 acres of lakes and ponds to migratory fish, according to The Nature Conservancy.

The annual run of herring in Massachusetts usually begins in mid-March. But Turner says the extended period of cold weather this past year has delayed that process.

"It slowed down the migration," she said, which helps explain why it took a week before the first herring was caught on video swimming up the ladder.

A herring history

Although Taunton has been known as Silver City for a silver-manufacturing trade that once flourished, it also in a bygone era had been called Herring Town.

The bar inside the mid-20th century Taunton Inn on Summer Street, now known as Marian Manor Skilled Rehabilitative Care, was called the Herring Run Lounge.

Mired in controversy

The dam at Morey's Bridge was the subject of some controversy after the state ordered that it be permanently opened in 2006.

The dam had been owned by Jefferson Development Partners LLC and its managing partner David Murphy of Leominster — who in 2005, before the onset of the dam scare, paid $1.7 million for the Whittenton Mills industrial complex at 437 Whittenton St., which included the Whittenton Pond dam.

The sale and purchase deal also included the dam at Morey's Bridge.

Murphy in 2007 encouraged and allowed an ad hoc group of lake residents calling themselves Help Save the Lake to replace the inoperable dam structure with a so-called cofferdam of their own invention — as a means of trying to retain more water on the Lake Sabbatia side.

The group in 2010, as per an agreement with the office of the Attorney General, removed concrete blocks from the site so that MassDOT could begin the task of installing a new dam and bridge.

Although Jefferson Development filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2014 and is still owner of record of the dilapidated Whittenton Mills complex, the city last November auctioned off tax liens assigned to the property.

The $1.2 million paid by two private investors covered back taxes, legal fees and a bill for a lengthy 24-hour fire watch, which at one time was imposed by the fire department for Murphy's alleged failure to repair a faulty sprinkler system.

If the state's Land Court grants an order of foreclosure, the investors will then be able to assume ownership and be in a position to develop and rehabilitate the site.

Regular checks on fish and eel numbers

Turner says either she or an associate drives to Taunton each weekday from New Bedford to download video data recorded by the Morey's Bridge dam camera.

"If my job ever falls through, then I can be a cab driver in Taunton," she joked, regarding her familiarity with the city by having made so many trips.

Turner said a second ladder that accommodates American eel, which is not visible to the naked eye, is also installed at the Bay Street dam.

She says she and her co-workers count the nocturnal swimmers, which are temporarily detained near their ladder and then released.

The Taunton River, which in 2009 was designated by Congress as being part of the country's Wild and Scenic River System, extends 37 miles from the Matfield and Town rivers in Bridgewater to Fall River, a section of which is located near Mount Hope Bay.

Funding

Among elected officials credited with lobbying for funding the removal of unwanted dams in Taunton were former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank and state Sen. Marc Pacheco, D-Taunton.

Frank was successful in securing $680,000 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the $800,000 it cost to dismantle Hopewell Mills dam and restore the surrounding area.

The state's Department of Mental Health also contributed $100,000 to that effort.

Pacheco in 2017 announced that more than $740,000 in federal funds were coming to Taunton, most of which would be used to complete the Mill River Restoration project.

Sara Burns, a water resource scientist with the non-profit The Nature Conservancy, says now that all three of the Mill River dams are finally gone, the Taunton River can truly be considered to be "undammed."

The following groups contributed to Mill River's restoration: Massachusetts Division of Economic Restoration; Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District; The Nature Conservancy; American Rivers; Save the Bay; NOAA Restoration Center; US Fish and Wildlife Service; USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service; Division of Marine Fisheries; Department of Mental Health; Department of Transportation; Mass Audubon; Taunton River Watershed Alliance; and the Corporate Wetlands Restoration Program.