The Vision Plan: Greenway Proposals by Study

Our Proposal for Greenways and Green Spaces "Our" here in the title refers to the entire team of over 200 people, including graduate students, faculty, the advisory board members and the many participants of the workshops. Due to this complexity of teamwork, our statistics may have some double counting errors. The over all magnitude of our proposals however, is correct. This vision plan shows that, if our plan were implemented close to half (45%) of New England would be part of a greenway and green space network. Let us examine these green spaces in three parts. First, the existing greenways and green spaces (see Table 1 the statistics of existing and proposed greenways), second, greenways and green spaces proposed by others and third, our proposals. Table 1 shows first, that approximately 18% of New England constitutes existing greenways and green spaces. Second, current proposals call for an additional 8% of New England as greenways/green spaces. Third, our proposal adds an additional 19%. How is our 19% greenways and green spaces distributed and why is a buffer proposed for all flowing rivers? On the distribution of rivers, they are nature's networks. In the words of the President's Commission, rivers are "threading through cities and countrysides like a giant circulation system (President's Commission, 1987)". This network has a truly perfect distribution in New England, just like river networks are perfectly distributed in most part of the world. Why are buffers needed around rivers? Hydrologists, landscape ecologists and especially, water resource planners have recognized the relationship of land use and water quality. For example, the planners of the largest reservoir of New England (the Quabbin Reservoir) found that when they protected sixty percent of the watershed closest to the impoundment, the water was drinkable without any treatment or filtration system. In fact, the Quabbin Reservoir provides some of the best quality drinking water in the USA (Fabos, et al, 1996). For the purpose of maintaining environmental quality the Massachusetts legislators debated this issue for close to a decade. They listened to the opinions of many scientists, planners and interested parties during their debates. They concluded that a 200-foot buffer of protection on either side of every flowing stream or river is sufficient for maintaining water quality in Massachusetts. As greenway planners, we have embraced the creation of this arbitrary, but very promising buffer for at least the three following reasons. 1.) These buffer areas provide an excellent framework for making connections for both people and wildlife. 2.) These buffer areas along the flowing rivers and lakefronts contain the majority of highly productive wet lands, ecosystems and floodplains. They often have steep banks and ravines. For these reasons, the development suitability of most of these buffer areas is limited. 3.) Typically the 200-foot buffer takes up from 10% to 20% of the landscape in New England while significantly improving or maintaining environmental quality. Scientists correctly take issue with this kind of generalization. They would be correct in cases of site level studies. They would find in places that 200-foot buffers are either too little or are more than what is needed to protect environmental quality. Planners and legislators, on the other hand, are dealing with policy issues and are expected to make this kind of generalization. Hence, we have embraced the Massachusetts River Protection Act of 1996 and we urge all other states to follow the Massachusetts example during the coming decades. We hope, however that future scientific investigations will be useful to reevaluate the validity of the 200-foot buffer and policy makers can make adjustments to the law if needed. In the meantime, Massachusetts seems to have the best norm for greenway planning currently available. Our proposal is simply to add more than 8 million acres (19%) of green space throughout New England. Our proposal is in addition to those that already exist and are proposed by others, e.g. the 3.2 million acres North Woods of Maine. Total green space protection could be over 19 million acres (45%) throughout New England. Furthermore our team mapped an additional 12,781 miles of state significant greenways and trails, to create a complete greenway network around New England. When added to the 19,000 miles of existing and over 4,000 miles of trails proposed by other agencies, New England could have a complete greenways and trails network of more than 36,000 miles. This network of greenways and trails would achieve our proposed goal "to make (our) greenway, and green spaces as accessible to everyone as our roads are today (Figure 8). This plan also satisfies the major themes of recent greenway conferences of 1998 and 1999 by showing how our team is "Making the Connections" for New England.