Volunteer
Join us to help plant trees, remove invasive plants, monitor water quality, organize programing for students and adults, and advocate for policy that protects water!
The Norwalk River Watershed Association needs your help! Whether you are available one morning a year or one morning a week, the Norwalk River and its watershed can benefit from your time and talents. Please let us know if you can help in these areas or in any others by contacting outreachcoordinator@norwalkriver.org
Habitat Restoration & Invasive Plant Removal
Ridgefield
McKeon Farm: Volunteers needed for meadow restoration project. The Ridgefield Pollinator Pathway is working on a 3-year meadow restoration project at town-owned McKeon Farm. Contact us at info@pollinator-pathway.org to join!
Wilton
Along the Norwalk River Valley Trail (NRVT) at Sharp Hill and Autumn Ridge Road: As new sections of trail go in, land is disturbed—much of it along the Norwalk River or tributaries. NRWA helps to plant these areas before the invasives take root AND to restore older sections, like the parking area at Sharp Hill in Wilton, where we are also collecting data on returning pollinators.
Allen's Meadow: NRWA and other Wilton Pollinator Pathway partners, led by Wilton resident Joe Bear, are replacing one acre of invasive mugwort with a pollinator meadow at Allen’s Meadow, a park that houses playing fields, community gardens, walking trails, and is an Audubon birding hotspot. Grants from the Connecticut Ornithological Association, Hartford Audubon Society, and Sustainable CT support the project. Joe is avoiding all pesticides and using tarps to smother sections of invasive mugwort for 7 months, 11 months, and 18 months, testing the optimal length of time for eradicating roots systems. Here is Joe's in-depth, step-by-step plan. We will report results here! A timeline in photographs here. Wilton Land Trust Property Across from the Belknap & Gregg Preserves off Seeley Road: This project is beginning in late 2022 and is in partnership with the Wilton Land Trust. The property includes a powerline right-of-way that was cleared by Eversource of its native shrubs in 2019 and covered with crushed stone that contained invasive mugwort seed. Now the area is overgrown with both mugwort and knotweed (see image right). Our goal is to used recycled billboard tarps to smother the invasives from the right-of-way down to the Norwalk River. This is the only area of invasives in a vast and beautiful forest, which the river winds through.
Norwalk
NRWA Awarded $150,000 Grant to Plant a Microforest in South Norwalk: NRWA, in partnership with the Norwalk Land Trust and the City of Norwalk, has been awarded an Urban Forest Equity Grant through Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
The project will replace pavement at Meadow Street Park in South Norwalk with a 5500-square-foot micro-forest over the next two years. This small forest aims to help achieve several of Norwalk's climate goals including expanding tree canopy to help capture carbon as well as mitigate flooding, rising temperatures, and threats to air and water quality. Interested in volunteering with this project? Email us at info@norwalkriver.org.
The Tree Canopy and Wetland Edges at Woodward Avenue Park in South Norwalk: Partnering with the city of
Norwalk and through grants from FactSet, REI, the Nature Conservancy’s Community Resilience Building program, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, NRWA has put in over 60 trees and is restoring a wetland area overrun with Australian phragmites to it native spartina grasses, seaside goldenrod, and shrubs, such as groundsel, bayberry, and high tide bush. Email us at info@norwalkriver.org to get involved.
Along the Norwalk River Valley Trail (NRVT) between Broad Street & Route 123: This part of the NRVT passes by the
Deering-Kellogg Ponds and is one of the most beautiful parts of the river. The Eversource substation looms on the bank near Rt 123, but views of the river and the wildlife present at the ponds make it worth a visit. Because of the construction of the substation and the Route 7 Connector, this area has been badly disturbed and is overgrown with invasive Japanese knotweed. NRWA has been working since 2018 to restore the riverbank. We have covered 32,000 square feet of the banks with recycled billboards, which serve as thick, black tarps. In 2023 and 2024, once the root systems of the knotweed have died, we will begin to take up the tarps and will replant the riverbank with native shrubs, grasses and wildflowers. Email us at info@norwalkriver.org to get involved
River Clean Ups
Every year NRWA hosts several river and shoreline cleanups. For a full listing, see our events page.
Don’t miss joining us for International Coastal Cleanup Day (ICC) every September. For over 25 years, the Ocean Conservancy has organized the ICC to provide a global snapshot of marine debris collected and recorded at more than 6,000 sites all over the world on a single day. This is the world’s largest volunteer effort for the ocean and waterways, and you can be part of it through NRWA and Save the Sound.
River Rangers
River Rangers are volunteers who adopt a section of river to oversee and improve. The volunteers set their own schedule of visits during which they pick up litter, clear brush or debris from culverts and cut back invasive plant species. If they need extra help solving a problem--such as huge or hazardous litter, large trees blocking a culvert, or sedimentation, erosion, or pollution problems—rangers contact NRWA. In the case of extreme special needs, the section may become the focus of an annual workday or cleanup. The opportunity is available to groups such as Scouts, school groups or corporate volunteer groups as well as individuals.
Other areas of need include research, fundraising/grant writing, GIS mapping, administrative organization, graphic design, and public relations. See info below for inquiries.