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Time to say goodbye to your Natick Christmas tree

January 4, 2021 by Deborah Brown Leave a Comment

Here’s an epiphany for you: there’s absolutely no disposing of Christmas trees and other holiday greenery in parks and conservation areas in Natick. It might seem like tossing nature into nature, but it’s actually illegal and bad for the environment. It’s also aesthetically displeasing. You know it’s going to take that tree about ten years to break down into the soil, right?

Natick Christmas tree disposal

How to say good-bye, fine firs

Fortunately, the Natick Department of Public Works makes it super-easy to dispose of your tree properly, with the curbside collection program.  Curbside collection of Christmas trees is scheduled for the first two full weeks in January on your regular trash collection day (the weeks of January 4th and January 11th). Trees should be bare, free from ornaments, and with no bags. Follow those simple rules, and the DPW will make your tree disappear.

Fire it up

At our house we observe a highly personalized Christmas tree ceremony each year. First, we take the tree away from the only field it’s ever known, and we set it up in our heated house. Next, we lavish the tree with ornate trappings. After a few weeks we declare that we “need our living room back.” We then strip the tree of its ornate trappings and evict it from our home. Months later, we set the Christmas tree on fire. A merry tradition, indeed.

You can do the same starting this month. Just make sure you get an open air burning permit. Stop in to the Natick Fire Department headquarters at 22 E. Central Street to fill out the easy paperwork. The burn season runs Jan. 15 through May 1, and you must obtain permission from the NFD each day that you wish to burn. Weather conditions are taken into consideration when determining if burning will be allowed each day.

Natick open air burning

Filed Under: Environment, Holidays

Natick’s chunk of the Charles River gets an ‘A’ grade

December 21, 2020 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

Natick’s portion of the Charles River, dubbed the Upper Middle Watershed, is the cleanest part of the 80-mile waterway that stretches from Hopkinton to Boston Harbor. Both this section (which also includes Dover, Sherborn, Wellesley and more)  and the adjacent Lower Middle Watershed (Newton, Weston, Waltham, and more) scored “A” grades.

This according to a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grading system designed in coordination with the Charles River Watershed Association. The new system reports on the entire river and takes into account more pollutants as well as two tributaries (the Stop River in Medfield and the Muddy River in Boston). The data is from 2019.

2019_ReportCard_byReach

EPA grading started in the mid-1990s has concentrated on the Lower Charles River Basin between Watertown and Boston, and focused on E. coli data from limited sampling.  Reporting now includes Cyanobacteria (toxic blue-green algae) blooms and combined sewer overflows (CSOs), which are both public health hazards, and richer sampling.

The Natick stretch owes its cleanliness in large part to the friendly environment bordering the river, including preserved forests and wetlands. With climate change’s many ramifications, however, tracking the impact on the river requires constant monitoring.

In other words, it’s looking good on large stretches of the Charles, but there’s more work to be done in getting and keeping it clean.

UpperMiddleWatershed


More: Kayaking the Charles River into South Natick

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Filed Under: Environment

Here’s the plan for replacing Natick Common’s ash trees

December 12, 2020 by Bob Brown 2 Comments

Natick Common’s Christmas and Hanukkah decorations distract the eye from the emptiness resulting from 10 ash trees removed along Park Street over the summer due to a beetle infestation. Now as a holiday gift, the town is previewing what will replace those fallen trees come next spring.

natick common former ash tree location

 

Tree Warden Art Goodhind has informed the Natick Select Board that town’s Department of Public Works has teamed with Steven Cosmos, the original landscape architect for the Common trees back in the mid-1980s, on the new plan.

Key to the strategy is diversifying the tree species, and taking shade, tree structure, and fall colors and winter interests into consideration.

“This plan was developed with careful consideration to complement the existing Town Common planting design, to provide shade where shade was lost, and to provide a new experience with specimen trees,” Goodhind wrote in a memo to the Select Board.

Among the species you can expect to see include Wildfire Tupelo, which is fast growing and lights up with two long flushes of red per year, and Cherokee Sweetgum, which boasts cork-like textured bark, sheds little “litter,” and turns burgundy and red in the fall.

Also part of the plan are Magnolia Elizabeth, which convert from green to yellow in fall, and Maackia Amurensis.

ash trees natick common

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Filed Under: Environment

COVID-19 zaps Natick’s municipal electricity usage

November 7, 2020 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

In 2010, Natick became a founding member of the state’s Green Communities program focused on using clean and less expensive energy, and as such needs to share an annual report confirming that it’s keeping up this week.

Natick Sustainability Coordinator Jillian Wilson Martin shared the report with the Select Board this week to get its stamp of approval, and among the more interesting sets of data focused on the impact of COVID-19 on the town’s energy use among its municipal and school infrastructure.

The town, which has reaped some $1.7M in grants through its Green Communities participation, has seen energy use decline through various efforts, including LED retrofits and solar panel installations, by 27% since FY08. But as you can see in these charts, electricity use really plummeted since the start of this calendar year, particularly in schools that have been shut down since March. Electricity use has decreased at municipal buildings, too, though most of them have continued to operate with at least skeleton staffs, so the change isn’t nearly as dramatic.

 

green communities report

Curiously, natural gas use has not really dropped off, so there’s an opportunity for savings if the town can address this.

“We really have been struggling as a community to manage our heating of our buildings efficiently,” Wilson Martin says. Even when data is normalized for weather conditions, the town’s natural gas use continues to be high. Energy controls operationalization is one key target, and Director of Facilities John Gadson is working on that. But the town is stuck in some situations, such as at Lilja Elementary School, which has a building control system from the mid-1990s that can’t be updated.

“It’s like having a computer from 1996, and so you wouldn’t have that computer anymore, you would have upgraded it by now, but we haven’t made those investments,” Wilson Martin says. Morse Institute Library’s control system is also out-of-date, with eBay among the options for finding parts.

On the bright side, the move from oil to natural gas in many town buildings is credited with much of the town’s energy use reduction over the past decade.

Finally, back to COVID-19, Wilson Martin addressed the issue of gauging the impact of leaving windows open at schools as the weather cools. Natick has reached out to other Green Communities, and energy costs for schools are expected to rise 20% to 25%.

For Natick, that rise would be attributed to heating costs as well as electricity costs for running new air purifiers in all the classrooms. “I don’t think the savings that we had from our energy reduction this past year will make up for the cost of these more intense operations,” Wilson Martin said.


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Filed Under: Environment, Government, Schools

Natick yard waste collection dates

November 1, 2020 by Deborah Brown Leave a Comment

Residential yard waste will be collected in Natick on Mondays in November based on residents’ regular trash collection day. Yard waste must be placed at curbside by 7am in paper bags or clearly marked rubbish barrels. Plastic bags will not be collected.

Natick Recycling Center

Yard waste collection dates:

If your trash pickup day is a Fri…your yard waste pickup day will be Mon., Nov. 2nd
If your trash pickup day is a Thur…your yard waste pickup day will be Mon., Nov. 9th
If your trash pickup day is a Wed…your yard waste pickup day will be Mon., Nov. 16th
If your trash pickup day is a Tue…your yard waste pickup day will be Mon., Nov. 23rd

You’ve got options

Yard waste may also be disposed of in the Compost Area at the Town Recycling Center on West Street. The yard waste is processed and incorporated into organic compost for recycling.

More on the Natick Recycling Center

The Natick Recycling Center, located on West St. at the corner of Rout 27, continues to enforce its COVID-19-related rules while remaining open to residents. Make sure to wear your mask and practice social distancing while dropping off your yard waste, cardboard, old paint, and more. Here’s a list of everything the Recycling Center accepts.

Here are the Natick Recycling Center’s hours:

Thursday & Friday: 8am – 3:30pm
Saturday & Sunday: 8am – 3:30pm

The Natick Recycling Center will be closed on Wednesday, November 11, in observation of Veterans Day.


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Filed Under: Environment, Recycling Center

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Events calendar

  1. Wonderful Wellesley event: Free Family Fun & Games

    June 4 @ 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm
  2. Lilja Elementary School Carnival

    June 5 @ 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm
  3. Natick Art Association, Art in the Park

    June 12 @ 10:00 am - 3:00 pm
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    June 26 @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

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