The housatonic valley association developed preliminary designs for the replacement of two barrier culverts on pond mountain brook in the town of kent

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 5 awarded a $302,000 Cooperative Agreement under the Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration (NRDAR) Program (CFDA 15.658) to the Housatonic Valley Association, Inc. to develop preliminary designs for replacing two barrier culverts on Pond Mountain Brook in Kent, Connecticut. The project aims to reconnect over 3 miles of high-quality cold-water habitat for Eastern Brook Trout within the Macedonia Brook watershed. The culvert replacements will use a stream simulation design to improve aquatic organism passage and increase flood resiliency. Once completed, the structures will serve as a regional demonstration of the value of aquatic organism passage as a best management practice.

These designs use stream simulation design (SSD)- a method for designing and building road-stream crossings that mimics the natural channel- essentially making the structure invisible to most fish and wildlife and increasing flood resiliency. Region-wide assessments of road-stream crossings in connecticuts northwest hills identified pond mountain brook and these barrier culverts as priorities for eastern brook trout conservation. Once completed- these projects reconnect over 3 miles of high-quality cold-water habitat within the macedonia brook watershed and could potentially serve as a regional climate refuge for eastern brook trout. The estimated construction cost to replace the two structures is 595-921.27. The town of kent will fund the downstream structure- and HVA will utilize 302-000 from a cooperative agreement with the US fish and wildlife service to replace the upstream structure. Currently there are 1.34 miles of barrier-free stream from pond mountain brooks confluence with macedonia brook upstream to the first target culvert. Replacing both culverts with SSD structures will reconnect an additional 2.15 stream- miles upstream of this site- for a total of 3.49 stream-miles of high-quality eastern brook trout habitat in the pond mountain brook watershed. Once replaced- these structures will serve as a regional demonstration of the value of aquatic organism passage as a best management practice for improving fish and wildlife passage- reducing flood risk- and limiting maintenance costs- through long-term monitoring of performance of these structures during high water.