Let’s start by hopping out to Connecticut where a familiar story awaits our attention. It’s full of conflict and interesting points to ponder. How would you like to live in a town they named a disease after?
As Beavers Flood Properties Old Lyme Debates Need for Action
OLD LYME — Dave Berggren can’t do laundry in his house any longer. He keeps his showers brief and he worries that having guests will overtax the septic system.
Berggren’s septic system drains so slowly that if he washes a load of laundry or uses the bathroom too often the water backs up into his pipes. His leach field – and his lawn – have been inundated with water due to beaver activity which has raised the level of Black Hall Pond.
“I don’t dare put a charge of water that large [like laundry] and I use the bathroom gingerly,” Berggren said. “It is a good thing I live alone and there are no females here. My leach field is backing it up.”
???
Truly it’s a burden to have a leach field backing up because of beaver damming. But you think its good there aren’t women on the property in particular? You may have threatened your sympathy card Dave. Because you know how women are. Always flushing the toilet with their selfish, flushy womanly ways.
You know I’m suddenly not actually surprised Dave lives alone.
Not only have the beavers flooded Berggren’s property, his neighbors have all seen the flooding of lawns, as well as trees and shrubs chewed and felled by the beavers. The Ames Open Space Property has also had over 17 acres of land flooded due to beaver activity on Bucky Brook and in a culvert near Whippoorwill Road.
“The beavers took half my ornamental evergreens,” said Rick Humpage, another resident of Boughton Road. “Traditionally I could see two boards of my retaining wall, now there is just one.”
On June 19, Mark Wayland, a building official for the Town of Old Lyme, surveyed Berggren’s property, also on Boughton Road. Wayland wrote a letter, now filed in the building department records, summarizing the problem: “At the time I observed obvious high water of Black Hall Pond encroaching on the property caused by active beavers and beaver dam at the south end of the pond. The water table has risen to the point where it has affected the existing structure’s foundation bearing soils to an extent of causing the structure to be “sinking.”
Wayland wrote that “[i]t is the purpose of this letter that the condition be made and documented to the destructive nature of the beaver dam at this location in question. It is also in my observation with the rising ground water at this location the existing septic system may also be in jeopardy and/or damaged.”
Oh those rotten beavers, sinking property! Dave needs to trap that varmint fast! Trouble is this beaver is sneaky and avoids the law.
Last year, Berggren did reach out to DEEP and was granted a trapping permit. The permit, however, was only good for 21 days.
“I had 21 days to get a trapper to trap the beaver. I sent the permit to the trapper and it took three days to arrive. It arrived the Friday of a holiday weekend,” Berggren said. “My 21 days were shrinking fast.”
The beaver was never caught, and Berggren has instead been forced to tear down the dam every other day in an effort to keep the water level from rising further.
Why do people always think it’s ONE single beaver culprit? A beaver that builds and maintains a successful dam is keeping the water level up to protect his family. I must say you picked QUITE the trapper. Who doesn’t work on weekends and couldn’t find the beaver in question’s resident calling card. And only 21 days? That makes me actually wistful. Our CDFW issues permits for the year and is usually happy to extend it.
Never mind. Something tells me the article is about to get a whole lot better.
Evan Griswold, a member of the Open Space Commission, expressed support for the beavers at a recent meeting. “I’m on the beaver’s side. They are part of the natural environment,” said Evan Griswold. “Yes, they are changing it from woods to grassland, but so what? Let the beavers do what the beavers do best.
Regardless of jurisdiction, the commission strongly opposes trapping and killing the beaver. Instead, the commission is recommending that if the town were to take action, that the town consider a beaver deceiver — a device that blocks beavers from dam-building in protected areas.
A beaver deceiver would cost the town about $3,000 and has a 90 percent success rate for the lifetime of the device. Trapping is typically only a short-term solution.
The culvert under Whippoorwill Road “is definitely a site where a beaver deceiver would be effective,” said Michael Callahan, the founder of Beaver Solutions LLC which has installed more than 1,500 beaver deceivers in the past 20 years. “Beavers are smart and probably look at that road bed as a dam with a hole in it. With a little bit of work the whole road bed becomes a dam. They get the biggest pond for the smallest amount of work.”
Dave, Dave. Dave. You’re in very good hands. Mike will fix this problem for you way better than that stupid trapper who couldn’t find the beaver in the first place. Let him do his job and your toilets will be flushing so well you might be able to have an actual WOMAN over to the place once in a while.
Sheesh.
NOW YOU MUST CLICK ON THIS TWEET.
Maybe you’re very busy this morning and you have to get Janie to day camp and the cat to the vet. Maybe you just had a fight with your best friend and found out your mother is coming for the weekend. You MUST click on it anyway. If you do nothing else I ever advise, for the rest of your entire life, you MUST do this. I’m not kidding. This is seriously, fatally, adorably, cute. Stupid baby pictures, cat videos or puppies don’t even comes close.
Our two American beaver parents, Alice and Patch, really have their paws full! Alice recently gave birth to 7 beaver kits. The little ones are spending most of their time inside their den with their family, but they grow quickly and they’ll soon be exploring outside! pic.twitter.com/ToZfH2kxfX
— Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium (@PghZoo) June 24, 2019
