This is opening weekend for many Vermont State Parks. To get ready, park staff have been preparing the grounds for Memorial Day crowds by mowing, raking, repairing lean-tos and applying fresh coats of paint. While this flurry of activity is a good indication that camping season is upon us, managing the state parks system is a year-round job.
And during this past off-season, there’s been a big effort to come up with a plan to manage more of the activity around one of the most popular waterways in the State Park system – Waterbury Reservoir. Susan Bulmer is Northeast Parks Regional Manager for the Vermont State Parks. She’s implementing a management plan that will cover campsites around the reservoir that, to date, have had no oversight. That’s because they’re on public land, but outside the boundaries of the two parks of the reservoir.
"Both Little River and Waterbury Center State Parks are located within Mount Mansfield State Forest," Bulmer explained. "The remote campsites are along the shores of Waterbury Reservoir and technically they’re within Mount Mansfield State Forest. We don’t have, necessarily, hard fast boundaries around Little River and Waterbury Center State Parks, but those two parks are found within Mount Mansfield State Forest."
"Everything from fires getting out of hand and out of control...to domestic issues, to health emergency issues, to some drug enforcement kind of stuff." -Susan Bulmer, Vermont State Parks
Bulmer says the issues with the remote campsites were brought to her attention a couple of years ago by law enforcement and local emergency responders.
"They raised concerns that there were more and more enforcement issues happening on the reservoir and at some of the remote campsites," said Bulmer. "And it ranged everything from fires getting out of hand and out of control, where the fire department had to go out to some of the remote sites and put out the fires, to domestic issues, to health emergency issues, to some drug enforcement kind of stuff."
Bulmer has been working with the Friends of the Waterbury Reservoir to map and number the remote campsites to make it easier for emergency responders to find them. Some of the sites may be shut down if they are prone to flooding. And the Vermont Department of Forest Parks and Recreation will be enhancing other sites, addressing erosion problems, improving trails and adding composting toilets.
"We’ve done an inventory of about 35 sites," said Bulmer, "we need to gather more information about those particular sites to see if they’re in good locations or not. And from that we will be identifying about ten sites that we’ll probably be building red worm composting toilets at."
Bulmer hopes to secure funding to improve the remaining remote campsites within the next three years.
