Peconic Fishway Partnership Team Receive Award for Teamwork

The Peconic River Fishway partnership was awarded the Coastal America Partnership Award in a ceremony Wednesday morning for their work in restoring the waterway around the recently renovated Grangebel Park.

Coastal America's website describes the award: "The highest level award for partnership efforts, this award from the president recognizes outstanding collaborative, multi-agency and multi-stakeholder efforts that leverage and combine resources to accomplish coastal restoration, preservation, protection, and education projects."

The 14-partner team, which  comprised representatives from the Town of Riverhead, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Environmental Protection Agency, conservation groups and citizens, finished construction this spring on a fish passage that allows alewife and American eels to return to their historic habitats which were blocked by dams in the early 1900s. 

Christine Kempner, Riverhead's community development director, said that the recognition may help the town in obtaining future grants as Riverhead continues to work on the Peconic River.

"The EPA focuses on partnerships, because they know projects don't get done unless there are a lot of stakeholders behind it," she said. "So this was recognizing the success of that partnership."

The new fishway at Grengebel is a "rock ramp," an embankment designed to simulate natural obstacles. Previously, the fish were transported by a metal fish ladder which carted them past a set of dams.

The fishway restoration was championed by Bob Conklin, a former Riverhead biology teacher who died last December. For over a decade, Conklin worked with citizens and government officials to conceptualize a way to allow the fish to return to their breeding ground.    

Alewife, like salmon, return to the river of their birth in the early spring. The alewife population, along with the American eels, has dramatically declined in recent years.