How One Osterville Family and the Barnstable Land Trust Resuscitated a Dying Treasure
On a walk or drive down East Bay Road in Osterville these days, one can’t help but notice the change in Little Parkers Pond and its surrounding banks. Bounded by a stone wall along the road, the berm dips gracefully along the newly deepened tidal salt pond’s edge and lush plantings
of native grasses, shrubs, and flowers thrive. The water, once stagnant, flows smoothly out to the sea.
But it hadn’t always been that way. For decades, the pond limped along, working its way towards the estuary below via an aging culvert behind homes on East Bay Road to the salt marsh that leads into Nantucket Sound. It was stagnant from years of sediment – built up from runoff –
and contained high levels of total phosphorous, total nitrogen, and chlorophyll, leaving its waters at a mere three-inch depth, barely capable of supporting any marine life. The surrounding berm along East Bay Road was overgrown with invasive species that choked out native plants that had lived there for centuries.
Over the past several years, however, the pond and land have been restored in a joint project between The Barnstable Land Trust, which owns the land on its west (East Bay Road) side, and the Shah Family, who own the land on its opposite bank. Its restoration was a long, complicated, and challenging process, which required navigating the requirements of local, county, state, and federal agencies; thousands of human-hourswere spent dredging the pond, fixing the causeway above it, stabilizing the culvert through which its waters flow, and restoring native species toits banks.
The history of Little Parkers Pond and its surrounding area, too, is long and complex.Part of the Centerville River estuarine system, it flowed well for generations. But its degradation began a long, long time ago, perhaps as early as 1880 when a causeway over the pond, providing access to some of the homes on East Bay Road, was established by deed. The land surrounding the pond along that west side
was privately owned for years, but in 1996 its two parcels were gifted to The Barnstable Land Trust (BLT), a non-profit land conservation, stewardship, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting natural and cultural resources. Stewards from the trust, including the late Redmond “Red” Bansfield, after whom the property (Bansfield Meadow) is named, worked diligently to reclaim the land, spending hours attempting to prune invasive species that had taken residence over the decades. While they were able to make some progress, in order to restore the land to its natural habitat, completing the entire project would have been enormously costly.
According to Janet Milkman, executive director of the BLT, a full restoration project to return to their natural states both the land and pond proved challenging. Motivation by local agencies, as well as funding for the project, had started and stalled for years.
In the late 1990s, the town of Barnstable proposed restoring the area because of its shoaling and water-quality issues, but that process sputtered. In the early 2000s, the Massachusetts Division of Ecological Restoration elevated the potential of restoring the pond, but challenge after challenge precluded its completion. Milkman knew that BLT alone could not facilitate the project: “BLT never would have had the funds to bring the lands and ponds back; it was simply too big a job.”
And so the effort to reclaim the pond and land limped along – until a benefactor emerged.
In 2007, Jill and Niraj Shah bought the main house and three-acre property along the east side of the pond. Residents of Boston, the family has long called Osterville its “home away from home.” They knew that the pond and surrounding area had been degraded, and wanted to help. “The salt pond had been in declining health for many, many decades due to restricted tidal flow from the ocean and the storm water flow into the pond from the upland areas of Osterville center,” said Jill. “In conjunction with the BLT, we decided the project was well worth the effort to help restore the pond to its natural state, which in turn will help the overall health of the bay downstream.” And so the Shahs offered to fund the restoration.
Thus began a years-long effort between the BLT and the Shah Family to reclaim the habitat.
It included an arduous permitting process that required wading through a circuitous series
of regional, state, and federal approvals that culminated in 2019. A team of experts worked in concert to assure that each step of the process – dredging the pond and safely storing that sediment, replacing its damaged soil, repairing the culvert, removing invasive species along the banks and replacing them with native plantings
– was ecologically sound. Local engineering
experts, including Trey Ruthven of Applied Coastal Research and Engineering in Mashpee, and John O’Day of Osterville’s own Sullivan Engineering and Consulting, provided engineering support. Seth Wilkinson and Ben Wollman of the Orleans- based Wilkinson Ecological Design crafted and implemented
an intricate plan to restore native plantings appropriate to each level of water and soil elevation. Pam Neubert, director of Marine Science at AECOM Environment in Woods Hole, provided scientific guidance. Many, more hands facilitated implementation.
Now that the work has been completed, Mother Nature is doing her part. Native species are back in place and thriving. The tidal waters have increased exponentially. Milkman says that in a few more years this flow is expected to match the downstream tidal height, which ranges between two to three feet. She is delighted with the process, noting “We have a salt pond back on its way to health, whereas it really was a mud puddle for a very long time.”
The Shah Family, too, is honored to have been able to help facilitate the project and is pleased with the result. According to Jill: “We are hopeful this restoration project will provide a healthier environment for the species living there for many decades to come, and might inspire others to take on similar projects to help the environment.”
– Karyn Bober Kuhn
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