You can bring a horse to water….but you can’t make that horse stop arguing that the water is unfit for equine consumption and unsafe to imbibe and we should send helicopters to fly over and see where it flows from. Just look at how much fun this suburb of Salem is having avoiding their own learning curve.
Danvers neighbors seek answers concerning beavers
For the second straight selectmen’s meeting, neighbors from Brentwood Circle, Glendale Drive and Old Maple Street complained about dealing with beavers and the rising water that results from the animals’ dams.
Diaz questioned if the town would be allowed to dredge the brook, since as it is now, the water is too shallow to put in devices known as “beaver deceivers” that allow water to flow through beaver-created dams. “We’ve had a good response (from the town),” said Diaz. “I think your hands are tied by the state. But something has to be done.”
Clark, who used to live in the neighborhood, said that a path between Glendale Drive and Endicott Park is “under about two or three feet of water. It’s not passable. It was a cow path that went to a pasture as part of Endicott Park up where the Village Green used to be. It was cut off by Route 95 but it was used as late as the 1980s.”
So wait a minute. The path is under two or three feet of water but you think the pond is too shallow for a ‘beaver deceiver’? A flow device like ours can work in as little as two feet of water. Obviously if the edges of the pond cover the path with three feet of water you have enough to install something that will make this a non-issue, and let the news cycle of Danvers get back to important stories about housing meridians or school lunches.
Mind you, I personally was written by the assistant to the town administrator and personally introduced her to Mike Callahan who wrote that he could easily come out and assess (and likely solve) their problem. At the time success seemed inevitable and she gave me the contact info for the head of public works and said he’d be handling it. But this is not my first rodeo, so I remembered at the time that our treasurer told me later that at the start of the beaver troubles she had invited the mayor and city staff to come over to watch a program on flow devices and not one person had shown up.
Because, as you know, it’s easier to be afraid than informed.
Nancy Barthelemy of 364 Maple St. said she also had a problem with the process. She said she wasn’t notified by the town before they took action against the beavers in July.
“We arrived home to find there was a line of trucks on our street and that the beavers had been killed,” said Barthelemy. “I have no problem with the dam being removed. I understand people were being flooded. I have no problem with that. I would like to see the kind of a beaver management policy so that neighbors are informed that this is going to be happening on their property and the neighbors are treated respectfully.”
She said she felt poorly treated by the workers that came to trap the beavers and remove the dams.
“I don’t mind making children homeless or ripping out wetlands, but those trappers were so rude!” Sigh. Believe me when I say Nancy, you were treated better than the beavers.
I guess I would have no friends on Maple Street at all, would I?
