Dear Friends & Neighbors, This is a friendly reminder about tomorrow night's meeting (Tuesday 4/2) at the Richmond Town Center (Town Offices, 203 Bridge St) to discuss a plan to widened the forested strip between the Winooski river and the ball fields at Volunteers' Green. Please join us if you can.

Here's the backstory: Perhaps you've noticed that sections of the riverbank at Volunteers' Green downstream of the bandshell have eroded substantially over the past few years. Floodwaters undercut trees along the bank, eventually washing them away, leaving some locations with little more than a single row of trees between the river and the playing fields at the Green. Without those trees to hold the soil in place, the rate of erosion will increase and could threaten parts of Volunteers' Green

An ad hoc committee of members from Richmond's Recreation, Conservation and Trails Committees along with two interested neighbors have been meeting for the past few months to draft a plan to help slow the erosion and better protect Volunteers' Green into the future.

The draft plan calls for planting trees to widen the forest buffer between the river and the Green to a width of approximately 75-feet for the length the park beginning roughly at the downstream end of the skating rink. While 75-feet may seem like a lot to some of you, the Department of Environmental Conservation recommends a 100-foot buffer for a river the size of the Winooski. For those who think its not enough, we strove to strike a balance.

Trees will also be planted along the riverbank adjacent to the bandshell (the area where rip rap was installed last year).

We've been in contact with the baseball and soccer leagues that use Volunteers' Green and we designed the tree planting plan to allow for all the fields needed by the leagues, as well other users of Volunteer's Green.

If you'd like to learn more about the project, please join us for a meeting at 7pm, Tuesday April 2nd, at the Town Center (aka Town Offices, 203 Bridge St). If you have questions, concerns or recommendations and cannot attend the meeting contact us via email at: jonjkart@hotmail.com.

Following the April 2nd meeting, the committee will finalize the plan and then bring it to the Selectboard who will decide whether to implement it.

Thanks for reading.

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