The Lincoln Squirrel – News, features and photos from Lincoln, Mass.

Alice Waugh

“Where does it all go?” Part 3: Recycling beyond single-stream

By Alice Waugh

Previous articles in this series looked at what happens to Lincoln’s trash and single-stream recycling. The DPW recently published a guide that lists everything accepted at the transfer station and where residents should put things (see Section 6 in the regulations). But what then happens to all that stuff?

Also in this series:

Compost

DPW officials have been pleasantly surprised at the amount of compostables they’ve been collecting at the transfer station, saving tons of material from being incinerated along with the town’s trash.

Black Earth Compost began collecting compostables at the transfer station in October 2019. Since the program began with four barrels (two more were added in early 2021), residents have dropped off an average of 3.76 tons per month. The company turns what it collects into compost and sells back to the public, as well as to area farms (including Codman Community Farms and The Food Project) at a reduced rate.

(Source: Lincoln Department of Public Works)

What can you compost? Black Earth has a list here. It’s not just food scraps (including meat and dairy items) — it’s also napkins and paper towels, wine corks, coffee grounds and filters, toothpicks, popsicle sticks, compostable pizza boxes, and even pet waste and bedding from any animals except dogs and cats. Dishes, utensils, etc. that are specifically labeled as “home-compostable” are also accepted.

Residents may also sign up for curbside pickup of compostables for $15.99 a month (plus purchase of an animal-proof 13-gallon bin for $38 or a 4-gallon bin for $16). The starter kit includes compostable liners for a small countertop bin and the curbside bin. For those who have outdoor space for home composting, the DPW sells backyard containers at its Lewis Street headquarters for $25 and countertop containers for $10 (click here to order). Massachusetts residents may no longer throw away clothing and textiles with their trash starting on November 1. Fortunately, the transfer station has several receptacles for this stuff.

Textiles

Bay State Textiles, a for-profit company that has a bin at the transfer station and at the Lincoln School, collects clean and dry clothing and textiles in any condition including shoes, purses, linens and towels, bedding, etc. Every American throws out about 81 pounds of post-consumer textiles each year, but only about 15% of the total is reclaimed with the other 85% going into the municipal solid waste (trash), according to Paul Curry, the company’s president.

What happens to the stuff depends on what category it falls into: reusable, repurposable, or recyclable. Reusable clothing is sold to firms in developing countries that sell or give away the items to local residents. One of Bay State’s customers in the Dominican Republic employees several hundred people to sort and categorize the items by condition and quality as they’re prepared for sale, Curry said.

Repurposed items come from textiles that are torn up, made into wipes, and sold to factories and service industries all over the world, where they’re used for cleaning equipment, staining furniture, cleaning cars, etc. Some items are also targeted for fiber conversion — they’re shredded and recycled for use in carpet padding, insulation, furniture stuffing, among other things. Techniques and markets for turning cotton-rich and polyester-rich textiles into new fibers are also advancing. Only about 4-5% of the materials it collects can’t be used for anything, Curry said.

The nonprofit American Red Cross picks up clothing from one of the bins and sells it through a vendor, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting its Disaster Relief Fund. Donors are eligible for tax deductions. 

Groups that accept new or gently used clothing and distribute items to people in need at little or no cost include:

  • The St. Vincent DePaul Society
  • Cradles to Crayons (newborn to age 12)
  • Circle of Hope (Needham), which distributes items free of charge to 25 area shelters and low-income programs in Boston
  • Solutions at Work Cambridge (clothing for children and homeless people a the Green Street Shelter, and business attire for job seekers)
  • ThreadEd — a Newton charity that provides donated professional clothes to low-income college students
  • thredUP — they mail you a free Donation Clean Out Kit with a pre-paid shipping label, and you get a tax receipt for $5 per bag.

More information:

Books

The transfer station has a mini-swap shed for books and other media, as well as a bin where residents can drop books off for resale to benefit the Friends of the Lincoln Library (FOLL). Before the advent of Covid-19, the FOLL accepted donations in the Bemis Hall foyer and sold them at monthly book sales. Nowadays the materials are picked up by the Bay State Book Company, which sells them online and returns a portion of the proceeds to FOLL. There are also FOLL bins in the Donelan’s parking lot, Tracey’s Service Station (at the intersection of Bedford Road and Route 2, and Lincoln Gas and Auto Service at 170 South Great Rd.

The book shed is a place where residents can leave and also take home used books, puzzles and similar items. Volunteers take items that have hung around too long to More Than Words, a Waltham program that trains and employs at-risk youth in its $4 million book-selling business.

Mattresses and box springs

These may not be put in the regular trash after November 1, but there’s an area at the transfer staton to leave them, where they’re picked up by Raw Material Recovery. Massachusetts residents and businesses discard about 600,000 mattresses and box springs annually — but once disassembled, more than 75 percent of mattress components can be recycled, according to the Massachusetts DEP.

Electronics

Items you can leave in the electronics area include computers, monitors, printers, VCRs, stereo equipment, refrigerators, microwaves, etc. — “basically anything with a cord,” said Susan Donaldson, the DPW’s office manager. They are picked up by East Coast Electronics Recycling, which declined to comment on what it does with the materials it receives.

Batteries, fluorescent bulbs, deposit bottles

The old swap shed is the place to drop off these items.

Rechargeable lithium batteries and fluorescent lightbulbs (rod-shape and U-shaped) are processed by Veolia to remove harmful metals and chemicals. Ordinary alkaline batteries and button batteries no longer contain these substances and can be thrown into the regular trash. Incandescent lightbulbs are also fine to put in the trash. Car batteries should be taken to a service station for disposal.

Waverley Redemption Center in Waltham takes deposit bottles and pays the town a portion of the 5-cent deposit on each bottle, which goes into the DPW’s recycling budget. 

Scrap metal

Schnitzer Steel in Everett picks up metals bin near the transfer station entrance. Items accepted in that bin include washers, dryers, metal pipes, fencing, cookware, baseball bats, outdoor grills, metal sinks, outdoor furniture, etc. (here’s a more detailed list of materials they buy from scrap dealers and contractors).

Schnitzer shreds the items into fist-sized pieces and sorts it with magnets to separate ferrous and nonferrous metals (steel vs. copper, aluminum, nickel, etc.), explained Eric Potashner, the company’s chief public affairs and communications officer. Most of the ferrous material from New England is shipped to steel mills overseas, where it’s smelted for making into new steel products such as rebar, sheet metal and car parts. The nonferrous metals are sent to another facility in Georgia for further processing to remove nonmetal components and then sold to domestic manufacturers to make into new products. Copper, a highly conductive metal, is much in demand these days since it’s a key component of electric vehicles.

(Editor’s note: this story was updated on August 8.)

“Where does it all go?” Part 1: Single-stream recycling

By Alice Waugh

Lincolnites are pretty conscientious about trying to recycle, but contamination is a problem here and everywhere else. Through carelessness or misunderstanding, people sometimes throw things that ought to be recycled into the trash, and throw trash into their recycling bin. In this series of articles, the Lincoln Squirrel will look at what happens to everything that gets dropped off at the transfer station as well as some tips on how to recycle more effectively.

Also in this series:

Like many towns, Lincoln’s transfer station accepts single-stream recycling in a bin where people can toss paper and junk mail, cardboard, metal cans, plastic bottles, clean aluminum foil, and some plastic food and beverage containers. 

But then what happens to all that stuff after it leaves town? Waste Management (WM) picks up the roll-off containers of recyclables and takes them to its materials recovery facility (MRF) in Billerica, where everything is dumped onto a tipping floor. The commingled items are then loaded into an elaborate multi-step sorting machine that plucks out different materials at various points. As the items go by on a conveyor belt, human operators also pick out as much nonrecyclable material as they can. See videos of MRFs in action here and here.

Mixed paper and cardboard are easily recyclable and can be made into new cardboard, paper, paper napkins, etc. WM sells most of these materials to Pratt Industries and Westrock, according to Chris Lucarelle, Waste Management’s Area Director for Recycling Operations. Glass gets crushed and made into new glass products as well as fiberglass insulation. Metal cans meet a similar fate.

The biggest issue, of course, is plastic. Before 2018, MRFs sold much of America’s recyclables to China, which used them as raw materials for its growing industrial base but which also led to pollution in that country. But in 2018, China stopped accepting most so-called recyclables from North American and Europe as part of Operation National Sword because the loads were contaminated with too much nonrecyclable material.

As a result, a lot of plastic that was supposedly recycled by Americans goes into landfills and incinerators in the U.S. or is shipped to developing countries without the capacity to properly process it, which in turn results in more pollution of land, sea, and air worldwide (see “Reckoning with the U.S. Role in Global Ocean Plastic Waste,” a 2022 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine). 

Recycling plastic is especially problematic because there are so many variations in chemical composition, color, and transparency and many of these items can’t be mixed even after they’re separated from glass, metal, paper, etc. And it’s often too expensive to sort all these types of plastic, especially since it’s usually cheaper to make new plastic rather than use recycled plastic. Also, many well-intentioned residents engage in “wishcycling” — putting nonrecyclable items in their recycling bin and thus contaminating the load, as noted in this 2019 WBUR piece.

There’s a lot of understandable confusion when people try to figure out what plastics can and can’t be recycled. For example, single-use plastic cold drink cups can be recycled, but not their lids or straws. Black plastic takeout containers can’t be recycled, but their clear lids can. And many plastic items actually contain two or more types of plastic, so they’re also not recyclable. The days are gone when you could look at the number inside the triangle on the bottom of a container and immediately tell if it’s recyclable. 

Plastic items are labeled with a resin identification number inside a triangular recycling logo that indicates how the plastic was made. However, the recycling logo is deceptive. Just because a package or bottle has a number or recycling symbol doesn’t mean it’s recyclable. Instead, it indicates the molecular structure of the plastic, which is used to categorize what can and can’t be recycled. Plastics labeled #3, #4, #6 and #7 are not recyclable, according to the Conservation Law Foundation (see chart).

Click for larger image. (Source: Conservation Law Foundation)

Some argue that recycling plastic is almost hopeless because of this sorting issue and because disposable plastic is relatively cheap to make as well as sturdy and sanitary. By extending the shelf life of food, plastic packaging actually reduces food waste, which comprises a large portion of household trash (see the “Saving Food” chart in “The Cost of Plastic Packaging”). Composting goes a long way toward reducing the amount of trash that has to be incinerated.

New uses for recycled plastic

However, the market for recycled plastics is slowly growing, due in part to increasing pressure for manufacturers to use more post-consumer resin (PCR) in their products. WM has some of its recycled plastic made into residential bins for its own use (EcoCarts).

None of the plastics from Lincoln that wind up in WM’s Billerica facility are sold overseas, according to Lucarelle. “National Sword proved to be a good thing for U.S. recyclers and we have seen a lot of growth in the domestic market,” he said.

Many plastic bottles are made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is often marked with the #1 symbol. One of the largest purchasers of WM’s PET is Unifi, which uses the plastic to create a textile fiber to make new products such as shoes, clothing and bags. Work clothing made from this fiber is now available to WM employees. WM also sells some of its HDPE and PP (high-density polyethylene and polypropylene, often marked as #2 and #5) to KW Plastics in Troy, Ala., which claims to be the world’s largest plastics recycler and resin supplier for those materials. 

State governments are also working to encourage more plastic conservation and recycling by industry. California now requires certain food service facilities to serve customers with packaging that is either reusable, recyclable, or compostable. Last year, Maine became the first state to require producers of packaged goods sold in the state to pay for maintaining and expanding municipal recycling programs — a so-called extended producer responsibility (EPR) law.

Burn, baby, burn

Other ways to dispose of plastic are traditional waste-to-energy incineration and pyrolysis, where mixed plastic is heated in a low-oxygen environment so it breaks into shorter-chain hydrocarbons that can then be used to make fuels and chemical feedstocks that can be fashioned back into polymers, creating a closed loop, according to Chemical and Engineering News (“Should plastics be a source of energy?”). However, as the article notes, waste-to-energy plants can produce only the amount of energy per day that they were designed to. Plastics have a higher energy content than most trash, so if the facility processes more plastics, it has to take in less waste overall.

Many multinational companies are partnering with cement manufacturers to burn unrecycled plastic waste in cement kilns, which operate at a very high temperature. Cement factories have traditionally burned coal, which is a major greenhouse gas producer. Plastic and trash are far cheaper fuel source, but the factories still cause a lot of air pollution, especially in countries where emissions regulations are inadequate or not enforced.

And the bigger problem remains. Less than 10% of all the plastic ever made has been recycled, mostly because it’s too costly to collect and sort. Plastic production, meanwhile, is projected to double within 20 years, according to Reuters. 

What you can and can’t recycle in Lincoln

Back here in Lincoln, how does an environmentally conscious resident know what’s recyclable? Recycle Smart MA (a program funded by the Massachusetts DEP) has an excellent Recyclopedia where you can quickly look up hundreds of different items. Waste Management also has a Recycling 101 website. A general rule of thumb: if it isn’t a container — or if you’re in doubt at all — put it in the trash.

Here are a few of the things that many people “wishcycle” that should not go into the single-stream container:

  • Single-use plastic drink lids, cutlery, straws
  • Polystyrene “to go” containers
  • Waxed cardboard milk/juice containers with plastic screw caps
  • Frozen food boxes (they also contain wax)
  • Paper cold drink cups with a wax coating
  • Paper coffee cups and their lids
  • Colored plastic cold cups (clear ones are OK)
  • Plastic food envelopes for snacks, drink pouches, etc.
  • Cardboard food canisters with metal rims containing nuts, chips, etc.
  • Black plastic takeout containers (though their clear lids are OK). Why? MRFs sort plastics by bouncing a beam of light off them. Since black plastic absorbs light, it can’t be sorted and goes straight to the incinerator.
  • Any kind of plastic bag, wrap or film
  • Padded paper mailing envelopes
  • Coat hangers, wires, tubing, etc. (these items, along with plastic bags, can tangle the sorting machinery)
  • Screws, nuts, bolts, tools, etc.
  • Larger metal or plastic objects such as toys, appliances, etc.
  • Styrofoam molded package insulation or packing peanuts
  • Rigid plastic form-molded packaging (sometimes glued to a cardboard backing)
  • Prescription medicine bottles
  • Anything contaminated with food

Some say “Tra-PELLo,” some say “TRAP-elow”

By Sara Mattes

(Editor’s note: The Lincoln Historical Society used this raging controversy as its theme for this year’s July 4 parade float — see the first picture in this photo gallery.)

In Lincoln’s earliest history, the road was known simply as Middle County Road. Lincoln lore has it that the name “Trapelo Road” derived from “traps below,” referring to the beaver traps that were set along the Beaver Brook in northeast Waltham. But that is probably myth, and a dive into archives offers an alternate explanation.

According to noted Waltham historian Edmund Sanderson, author of Waltham as a Precinct of Watertown and as a Town, the road from Beaver Brook to the Lincoln border was known for its steep hills. It was the custom to have horses stationed at the foot of such hills that could be temporarily hooked up to assist wagons with heavy loads. The word “trapelo” in Italian means “to drag by hooks or by extra horses,” so this practice in Italy is called “going trapelo.”

So, while some in Lincoln pronounce it “TRAPelo,” in light of the Italian derivation of the word, the proper pronunciation would be “TraPELo.” All the other towns through which Trapelo runs pronounce it “TraPELo.” Lincoln remains the outlier.

(This will be the first of several pieces on the development of Lincoln’s road system. We are very indebted to Kerry Glass’s important work on the evolution of Lincoln roads from its beginnings, using original deeds and maps. This work, “Tracing the History of Lincoln Ways,” will soon be available on line through Lincoln Archives and the Lincoln Historical Society.)

“Lincoln’s History” is an occasional column by members of the Lincoln Historical Society.

Property sales in October 2021

52 Todd Pond Rd. — Juliet M. Rago McNamara Trust to Andriy and Inna Kochura for $525,000 (October 29)

192 Weston Rd. — Bojan Rip to Michael Olsen for $1,200,000 (October 29)

8 Huntley Lane — Thomas A. Cappucci to Yukiko Bloomenthal Trust and 8 Huntley Lane Nominee Trust for $1,340,000 (October 29)

21A South Commons — Jeffrey Arena to Nicholas Bliamptis for $505,000 (October 25)

14 Stratford Way — Gustav Beerel to Brian Hoertdoerfer and Emily Marcus-Hoertdoerfer for $2,210,000 (October 6)

49 Round Hill Rd. — Christopher Awtrey to [redacted, 2025] for $2,000,000 (October 4)

11 Stratford Way — Walter McCarty to Jacob Housman and Catherine Buzney for $2,300,00 (October 4)

22 Deerhaven Rd. — Diane Marangoly to Ramesh Natarajan and Aruna Ramesh for $1,390,000 (October 1)

Harold Smith, 1933–2019

Harold Smith at Open Studio in Lincoln. (Photos courtesy Eric Smith)

There will be a memorial service on Sunday, May 19 for Harold Dean Smith — husband, father, artist, engineer — who passed at Emerson Hospital on April 23 at age 85, just after celebrating 55 years of marriage to Elizabeth “Betty” (Harris) Smith.

Harold was born in St. Louis, Mo., on October 10, 1933. He was the son of the late Silas Clark Smith, Jr. and Verna Louise (Eichmeyer) Smith Roloff. Harold was raised with his brother Bernie, and they shared great times sailing toy boats in Clifton Park pond, playing on swing sets at the Bryan Mullanphy School, making toy paper airplanes, blowing up tin cans with firecrackers, using windup trains to knock down wooden block buildings, visiting Grandpa, and sledding down Sulphur Street (swing wide at the bottom of the hill and steer hard to miss the house across the street — impossible but he did it anyway).

Harold graduated in 1957 from the University of Washington in St. Louis with a degree in architecture, in which he had an interest from an early age. He went on to earn two advanced degrees from MIT  in civil and environmental engineering (1957) and civil engineering (1961). He was employed by Simpson Gumpertz and Hager for 32 years as a structural engineer. During that time he worked on the Epcot Center in Florida, the John Hancock Tower, telescope facilities in Hawaii, and as a consultant for Firestone, among many other projects.

He was a quiet, reserved man who enjoyed his time painting. He was a longtime member of the Lincoln Recreation Department’s Open Studio and he showed his watercolor paintings on occasion. He was honored to have his work chosen to be part of the 15th edition of the book Splash15: Creative Solutions (part of the Splash: The Best of Watercolor series). He was also the primary designer behind the design and layout of the local magazine the Lincoln Review.

Smith and two of his grandchildren.

Some of Harold’s most beautiful work was his early pen and ink drawings that captured the simple flavor of his beloved Lincoln. In his later years, his art was inspired by his international travel. This included France, England, Turkey, India, New Zealand, Japan, Hungry, Anguilla, and many more. He enjoyed traveling with his wife and photographing the places they visited. He shared his view of the world with others and using some of those photos as the basis for his paintings.

Harold is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Harris Smith; his brother, Bernard Smith; his four children, Dean Smith, Caron King, Eric Smith, and Craig Smith; and five grandchildren, Jessica Smith, Krysta Smith, Susannah King, Kamille Smith, and Stephen Smith.

There will be a private burial at the Lincoln Cemetery. Relatives and friends are encouraged to gather for a memorial at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 19 at the First Parish Church. In lieu of flowers, contributions in his memory can be made to the Annual Fund of Washington University, c/o Washington University, Campus Box 1082, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130. Click here to leave a note in his online guest book at Dee Funeral Home.

Flint’s Pond still too low for twice-weekly watering

Water levels in Flint’s Pond since 2010 (click to enlarge). The last two red X’s indicate levels in July 2016 and July 2017.

Despite the rainy spring and summer thus far, lawn watering via sprinklers is still permitted in Lincoln only once a week because Flint’s Pond has not yet rebounded to a level that would allow more water use.

Though watering is normally allowed two days a week in the summer, the Board of Water Commissioners banned all outdoor watering in August 2016 during the drought. The board relaxed it to once a week in May and maintained that restriction in June and July.

Precipitation for 2017 overall has been normal, with the first three months below normal and the second three months above. Although the Flint’s Pond’s water level has risen, it’s still markedly below where it usually is at this time of year, according to Water Department Superintendent Greg Woods.

“The water use by our customers has actually been below normal thanks to their compliance with the water restrictions. If the rainfall continues and our customers continue to conserve, we might be able to relax back to the two-day-a-week restriction next month,” he said.

The two-day-a-week schedule is the normal restriction for Lincoln from May 1 through September 30 as per the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) because Lincolnites use more than 65 gallons per person per day on average, “and we also draw more water annually from our water sources than allowed by our DEP permit,” Woods added.

Some have wondered why Flint’s Pond is still low when the nearby Cambridge Reservoir appears to be full. The reservoir filled up more quickly because it has a very large watershed to capture the precipitation and funnel it into the reservoir’s basin, Woods said. Flint’s Pond has a relatively small watershed and essentially sees a 1:1 ratio of precipitation and pond level increases, compared to about 2:1 for the Cambridge Reservoir. The Flint’s Pond dam is not overtopping or leaking and is experiencing the normal amount of seepage underneath, Woods said.

The water commissioners have open meetings on the second Wednesday of every month at 4:30 p.m. in the Water Department pump house to review the latest data and decide what (if any) water restrictions to impose. “We expect the water level to be lower in the end of the summer, so at the next meeting, we will compare the measured level to the normal level in August,” said Water Commissioner Ruth Ann Hendrickson.

See the Water Department web page for details on what types of watering ares allowed and when.

Two projects under way at Hanscom

Starting in August, residents who live near Hanscom Field may notice more noise than usual as air traffic is temporarily rerouted during two separate runway reconstruction projects. However, another unrelated project—construction of a new hangar for Boston MedFlight—will not result in any increase in noise or air traffic in the area

Logan Airport is now resurfacing its most heavily used runway, meaning it will be closed entirely until late June and open for arrivals only until about November 1. What this means for the Lincoln/Bedford area is that some smaller business-type flights will use Hanscom instead of Logan, according to Amber Goodspeed, MassPort’s manager for airport administration at Hanscom Field.

Beginning in August, one of Hanscom’s runways will also be resurfaced, Goodspeed added. As a result, some of Hanscom’s traffic will be rerouted so their flight paths go more over Bedford and Lincoln rather than Concord and Lexington, Goodspeed said.

Boston MedFlight project

Boston MedFlight is also moving its local base from Hanscom Air Force Base to Hanscom Field. The company is building a new hangar on the site of an older one that’s been demolished. This new facility will allow easier access for training, education, community outreach as well as helicopter maintenance, since visitors will no longer need to go through Air Force base security.

“Nothing is going to change as far as our operations go” in terms of the number of aircraft or staff on site, said Boston MedFlight General Manager of Aviation Rick Kenin.

Boston MedFlight’s fleet (click to enlarge).

Among those who will benefit from the easier access are Lincoln Fire Department paramedics, who get their first-responder training from Boston MedFlight. The company already hosts some visits from community members and groups such as Boy Scouts, “but we plan to greatly expand that once we’re on the civilian side” of the air field, Kenin said. “This will work out much better as far as community activity and outreach.”

The $17 million project is expected to be complete in about a year.

Boston MedFlight currently has two local offices, one on Hanscom Air Force Base and another in the nearby Lincoln North office building, as well as facilities in Plymouth and Lawrence. The nonprofit firm transports about 4,000 patients per year, about half of them via ground transportation and the rest by helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft, Kenin said. Most of the flights take critically ill or injured patients from community hospitals (including Emerson Hospital in Concord) to Massachusetts General Hospital and other advanced-care Boston hospitals, but the company also picks up some patients directly from accident scenes.

Boston MedFlight is not taxpayer-funded, relying instead on donations and insurance reimbursements, Kenin noted.

Flint’s Pond dam to get upgrade

damPerhaps ironically in this year of drought, the Flint’s Pond dam will be getting some rehab work this winter to make sure it can withstand a 50-year flood.

A hydraulic evaluation  required by the Office of Dam Safety indicated that the dam would overtop during a 50-year flood because the current spillway is undersized, said Water Department Superintendent Greg Woods. When water overflows a dam beyond its spillway capacity, it erodes soil and other material whose weight holds the dam in place, putting it in danger of failure.

Construction signs on Sandy Pond Road and Baker Bridge Road will alert motorists to the fact that trucks and equipment will be entering and exiting via a temporary easement being constructed at 67 Sandy Pond Road to access the dam site, which is at the southeast corner of Flint’s Pond. Work could begin as soon as December, and while the contract calls for the work to be completed in 75 days, the contractor will probably have to return in the spring to finish work on the ground cover, Woods said.

The town’s water supply and water quality will not be affected by the work, mainly because the water level is so low, although engineering plans were developed under the assumption that Flint’s Pond was at normal capacity. The cost to the town will be $125,000.

Drought playing havoc with plants and wildlife, speakers say

Lincoln resident Ron Rosenbaum photographed these turkeys helping themselves to some much-needed water.

Lincoln resident Ron Rosenbaum photographed these turkeys helping themselves to some much-needed water.

The drought we’re experiencing is causing brown lawns and dry land where water used to be—but it’s no picnic for the area’s plants and animals either, as three local experts explained at a presentation titled “Brown is the New Green.”

Residents at the well-attended September 21 event in Bemis Hall learned that this isn’t the worst drought in recent history—yet. The worst droughts in Lincoln in the last few decades were in 1949-51 and 1964-67, said Greg Woods, Superintendent of the Lincoln Water Department.

“We’ve been at this level before,” said Woods, showing old photos of Flint’s Pond at low levels. However, the coming of winter snows doesn’t necessarily mean things will go back to normal right away. “We have to prepare for the worst and hope we have a very wet winter and spring,” he said.

deviation-from-50-year-average

Precipitation totals compared to the 50-year average since 2002 (click any image to enlarge).

flints-pond-monthly-water-levels

Water levels in Flint’s Pond, with different colored lines for 2010-16 and two earlier droughts, 1949-1951 and 1964-1967.

quarterly-per-capita-water-use

Quarterly per-capita water usage in Lincoln, with a red line showing the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection standard.

Lincoln residents have used about 10 million more gallons of public water this summer than the average for previous summers, said Woods as he showed a series of charts on water consumption and precipitation. Usage has declined somewhat since the mandatory outdoor watering ban went into effect on August 21, but residents are still using far more than the state target of 65 gallons per person per day. The town meets the goal from October to March, but it goes up to about 130 gallons per person per day during growing season, Woods said.

The biggest culprits in outdoor watering are traditional sprinklers, which spread water in places where it isn’t needed and also result in water loss due to evaporation, Woods said. Soaker hoses minimize evaporation loss but still use about a gallon of water per minute, “so you’re still going to use hundreds or thousands of gallons,” he said. The gold standard today is a drip irrigation system, he added

Effects on flora and fauna

The current drought should be viewed in the context of a warming climate, according to Richard Primack, professor of biology at Boston University. “It’s very clear we’re in a warming trend associated with global warming and the urbanization of Boston,” he said, noting that last month was the warmest August on record here.

Swaths of brown grass may be something of an eyesore to those who prefer a lush green lawn, but it’s a matter of life and death for insects that live in grass, and the birds that eat those insects. Streams that have gone way down or dried up completely are also bad news for many species, said Primack, who was quoted in an August 27 Boston Globe article about the drought’s effects on wildlife.

“They’re going to die—there’s no place for the fish and aquatic insects to live,” he said. “A lot of aquatic animals are in trouble.” Making things worse is that nutrients in the remaining water become more concentrated, leading to algal blooms and lack of oxygen in the water.

Plant life has changed as well, said Primack as he showed photos of the banks of Walden Pond where the water has receded. Alders that used to be on the water’s edge have died, while shrubs, grasses and wildflowers such as purple gerardia and golden hyssop have grown in the soil that was formerly underwater. They, too, will perish when the water level rises again, said Primack, who has studied the effects of warming climate on New England plants, birds and butterflies for the last 14 years and is the author of .”

Farmers are certainly feeling the effects of the drought. Corn, pumpkins and other crops will die if they aren’t irrigated, and the yield from fruit trees will also be down this fall. Plants and trees that didn’t flower mean trouble for bees and butterflies as well. But not all plants are suffering, Primack said; succulents (relatives of desert plants) such as purslane, knotweed, spurges and sedum are “really common and really huge,” he said. By the same token, Southern magnolias and even fig trees may thrive in a climate that was once too harsh for them.

The biggest losers may be birds, who are usually eating juicy wild berries and crabapples but have little to eat this year. “There are very few birds in forests and fields; they’ve left to find food somewhere else, and migratory birds have left early. It will take many years for bird populations to recover,” Primack said.

Also scarcer due to the dry weather are insects such as mosquitoes, ticks and deer flies, and amphibians such as salamanders that live in vernal pools that dried up earlier than usual. People may have noticed fewer of the nuisance insects and more butterflies and bees congregating in their flower gardens, which (assuming they’ve been watered over the summer) are a target for the hungry insects. One insect that has thrived, however, is the antlion, which build sand traps resembling inverse anthills in sandy areas around dried-up lakebeds.

The rain will return, but New England will see these conditions more and more often, primack said. With temperatures predicted to get 4–6 degrees F. warmer over the next century, “this will be a typical year 80 years from now,” while low-lying coastal areas of South Boston, Somerville and Everett will be underwater, he said

Gardening with less water

In conditions like this, what’s a gardener to do? Lincoln Garden Club member Daniela Caride had some suggestions focusing on “sustainable gardening.” To minimize water usage, she recommended investing in rain barrels, avoiding sprinklers, and watering only at night or early in the morning rather than in the heat of the day.

Options for lawns include simply having a smaller lawn, planting other types of ground cover, or turning your lawn into a wildflower meadow. Mulch (especially leaf mulch, which is cheaper and easier to handle than bark mulch) is good for keeping moisture in the soil and providing shade and shelter for small animals and insects, Caride added.

When planning your garden, “think before you plant,” Caride said. Avoid “thirsty” plants like chameleon, roses and astilbe, which can suck up water even from surrounding plants, and go for more native plants, which are adapted to our climate (thus needing less watering) and offer food and shelter for small animals and insects.

42 watering warnings since sprinkler ban

watering-banSince Lincoln’s outdoor watering ban went into effect last week, the town’s Water Department has issued 42 warnings to residents for violating the ban—about 30 percent more than the usual total for an entire summer.

The sharp increase is a result of the complete ban on sprinklers and automatic watering systems necessitated by the severe drought. Normally, residents are allowed to water lawns two days a week during certain times of day during the summer, but this is the first time there’s been a total prohibition. Town officials informed residents about the ban with a reverse 911 call to all households as well as the town website, social media and news outlets.

Lincoln is not alone—many Massachusetts towns have instituted voluntary or mandatory watering bans as the dry conditions have only worsened as the summer has gone on. However, not everyone in the area has complied, some even going so far as to post bogus “Well Water” signs on their lush green lawns, according to an August 25 Boston Globe article.

Water Department Superintendent Greg Woods patrols the town several times a week looking for watering violators, knocking on doors and leaving notices on doorknobs for violations he can see from the road. The department also gets occasional phone calls from civic-minded residents who take to heart the dictum “see something, say something” when it comes to water conservation.

This summer has seen an uptick on the number of calls from “people reporting that their neighbors have unusually green yards and they suspect excessive watering is going on,” said Woods, whose department issues 20 to 30 warnings in a normal year for watering violations. “Irrigator violators” are slapped with a $50 fine for a second offense and $100 for subsequent offenses. Two or three residents a year incur fines for a second offense, “but we’ve never gone to a third notice,” he said.

Despite the public outreach (which will be augmented with sandwich boards this week), “there are still people that don’t know,” Woods said. One resident who was out of town and has an automated watering system called the Water Department to apologize. “We were about two hours away from mailing that warning to them,” he said with a smile.

Although the increased demand on the town water supply due to outdoor watering will drop off once the fall weather arrives, there’s no telling how long the drought will last. “The hope is that we have a wet fall, winter and spring,” Woods said. “I’ll be doing the rain dance a lot.”