Boquet River Association names new leader

Two-year grant supports first paid staff in a decade

By Zachary Matson

The Boquet River Association named Colin Powers as its executive director, the friends group’s first paid staffer in a decade. 

Powers, who served on the organization’s board of directors until his appointment, worked as a producer and manager at Mountain Lake PBS and recently completed a Community Resilience and Planning certificate program at the University of Vermont focused on floodplain management and river restoration. 

An avid canoeist, Powers and his family live along the Boquet in Wadhams. He spends much of his time paddling, hiking, swimming and mountain biking in the river’s rugged watershed.

“Being on the river and watching it rise and fall, watching it everyday is constantly stirring that boater in me,” he said. “It’s always there comforting me.” 

Known as BRASS, the nonprofit in recent years has sought a reinvigoration, recruiting new board members and taking up projects to plant trees along river banks, champion restoration of salmon runs and plan the removal of a small barrier in the river near Elizabethtown. 

The Lake Champlain Basin Program earlier this year awarded BRASS grants to hire a full-time executive director and develop a strategic plan, which BRASS leaders hope will better position the group to carry out more consistent and effective projects and grow its work in the 280-square-mile watershed.

Formed in 1984 with the support of the Essex County Planning Department, BRASS, like the river it represents, has flashed in and out of activity. The small nonprofit championed removal of the old mill dam in Willsboro and restoration of historic salmon runs, studied the threats of erosion and sedimentation and in its four decades planted more than 270,000 trees to stabilize banks. But in the past dozen years, towns withdrew funding, volunteer participation waned without paid staff and the organization’s long-time leaders stepped back. BRASS nearly went defunct during the pandemic, unable for three years to gather a quorum for board meetings. 

That ended in January 2023, and a new cohort of board members have joined with veterans to infuse energy into the watershed group. In late April, dozens of volunteers met at a farm in Wadhams to help restore a floodplain with a long history of cattle grazing and floods. Working with Trout Unlimited and the Essex County Soil and Water Conservation District, BRASS organized volunteers, identified willing landowners and coordinated what became the association’s largest volunteer event in its history.  

“BRASS is thrilled to move from an all-volunteer organization to again having a full-time professional leading our efforts that help the river and its communities thrive,” said Vic Putman, the BRASS board president. 

The basin program’s $150,000 grant will support the executive director’s $60,000 salary and fringe benefits for two years as a separate grant supports development of a new strategic plan and training for board members now managing a full-time employee.

Powers, who said he had been volunteering about 20 hours a week with the nonprofit, started the new position in October and will soon move into office space at the Willsboro Visitor Center. Powers lived in Plattsburgh and Essex while working at Mountain Lake PBS from 2006 to 2012 before relocating. He continued to visit the Adirondacks, where he said he found community while working at the TV station, and moved back full time in 2022. 

BRASS has not updated its strategic plan since 2011. Powers said the new one could be completed by next fall and that he planned to engage residents, local leaders and other nonprofits in its development. 

“We want to really fashion something that is based on the current threats and situations along the river and based on interests and abilities that this new board has identified as top priorities,” Powers said.

Powers said there are scores of sites along the river with eroded banks and high levels of sedimentation that would benefit from different types of restoration projects. He also hopes to improve water quality monitoring and expand the use of water level gauges that could help provide an early warning of floods that often overwhelm the state’s steepest river system.  

The group will continue to work with government agencies and other nonprofits that carry out projects in the watershed, serving as the local experts with connections and detailed knowledge of the river. 

“We are first and foremost thinking about this watershed,” Powers said. “We can be advocates for our five towns and our catch basin and raise awareness of what issues need to be addressed and prioritized.”