About Us: New Hampshire Rivers Council

Annual Report 2015 (, 3 MB)
Annual Report 2014 (, 2 MB)
Annual Report 2012 (, 770 KB)
*These PDFs are best printed double-sided on legal-sized paper

The New Hampshire Rivers Council has made many significant contributions to river and watershed conservation. The following is a small sample:

  • Partnered in a comprehensive study of the value of surface waters in New Hampshire.
  • Worked with grassroots organizations to implement minimum water levels on protected rivers.
  • Worked with policy makers to preserve protections against harm caused by sludge spreading along rivers and over aquifers.
  • Participated in the Citizens for New Hampshire Land & Community Heritage Coalition to work with the Governor’s Commission on Land & Community Heritage to recommend a new, permanent and adequately funded program for land conservation in New Hampshire.
  • Advised numerous river groups considering or applying for inclusion to the State Rivers Management and Protection Program, most recently the Souhegan and Isinglass rivers.
  • Supported several Local River Advisory Committees in their successful quest to remove their exclusions in the Comprehensive Shoreland Protection Act to include the Upper and Lower Merrimack, Lamprey, Contoocook and North Branch, and Swift Rivers — rivers that are already covered in the River Management & Protection Act, but which were exempted from the important shoreland protection bill when it was passed.
  • In cooperation with other state, regional and national organizations, educated Congress to fund the Land & Water Conservation Fund — our nation’s single most significant source of land and water protection funding.
  • Partnered with the New Hampshire Lakes Association to create a Watershed Stewardship Program.
  • Joined other New Hampshire organizations to negotiate a creative license agreement for the 15-mile Falls dam on the Connecticut River. In a cooperative, non-adversarial process, conservation and recreation groups worked with the dam owner on an agreement that will provide better protection to the river ecosystem and preserve almost 12,000 acres of land on the river and surrounding the Connecticut Lakes.

Objectives

  1. Ensure that the “instream flow rules” that protect the ecosystem of rivers in the state management program are established.
  2. Contribute to a study of the economic value of the state’s rivers and lakes.
  3. Conduct workshops for citizens and decision makers regarding important river issues.
  4. Coordinate river and watershed groups statewide to help them work on river and watershed issues.
  5. Strengthen our organization’s leadership and membership

 

Priorities

  • Educating and informing the public and decision makers about the benefits and value of New Hampshire’s rivers, watersheds and related natural resources;
  • Building a constituency for New Hampshire rivers by coordinating and supporting grassroots river and watershed organizations;
  • Advocating for policies, and funding that conserve river resources and improve their management;
  • Encouraging and supporting the nomination of additional rivers into the state’s Rivers Management and Protection Program.

 

Officers

Michele L. Tremblay, Webster, NH
President
Michele L. Tremblay
Michele L. Tremblay, Principal, naturesource communications, provides organizational development, policy, planning, and training services to federal, state, and local agencies and nonprofit and grassroots groups throughout the Northeast US and Canada.. Michele served as chair of the Watershed Advisory Group for the Executive Committee of the Merrimack River Initiative. She has served as a representative to the Upper Merrimack Local Advisory Committee and as its chair and Program Director for the committee’s Upper Merrimack Monitoring Program since its inception in 1990. Michele was appointed by the Governor to represent conservation interests on the State Rivers Management Advisory Committee and serves as its chair, the Water Council, and the Public Water Access Advisory Board. Michele served on the (now sunsetted) state Soreland Advisory Committee. She was previously appointed by the Governor to the the State Lakes Advisory Committee As Executive Director the State Conservation Committee, she also served on the, Historic Agricultural Structures Advisory Committee, and Conservation License Plate Advisory Committee. For two decades, she served on the Boscawen Conservation Commission (that manages the Boscawen Town Forest and Tree Farm) and was its chair for fifteen years. She is active in legislative issues and in 1998, coordinated river conservation groups for the initiation and successful passage of a bill that granted shoreland protection to previously excluded rivers in New Hampshire. She served on the Penacook-Boscawen Water Precinct Board of Commissioners for several years. A New Hampshire native, she has served the region and state in a variety of land, planning, river, and lake conservation groups and received the first NH River Conservationist of the Year in 1998, an Environmental Hero by Proctor Academy in 2002, River Network River Hero in 2003. Ms. Tremblay was honored to receive the Helen Award for Volunteerism in 2006 and a President’s Volunteer Service Award from the Bush administration in 2008. In 2013, she received a River Advocate Award and a Longevity Award from the New Hampshire Rivers Management and Protection Program. Michele is a Justice of the Peace in the State of New Hampshire.

David Packard, Goffstown, NH
Vice-president
David Packard
David is a scientist working formerly with Granite Shore Power in New Hampshire and Eversource. He spent much of his career in the construction, start-up, and repair of power generating plants around the southwestern United States and New Hampshire, working in the area of fuels and air quality, and negotiating major contracts. He is past chairman of the Goffstown Solid Waste Commission (the town with one of the highest recycling rates in New Hampshire), most recently serving on the board of NH LAKES, and currently Chair of the NH Lakes Management Advisory Committee. He is a former Boy Scout leader with a profound interest in the preservation and wise use of the state’s waters and natural resources. David and his wife Pat enjoy birds, wildlife, dogs, and two wonderful energetic grandchildren on and in the water at Lower Suncook Lake in Barnstead—and occasionally gets the opportunity to drop in his canoe.

Sally Soule, Kittery Point, ME
Secretary
Sally Soule
Sally works for  the Watershed Assistance section of the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (DES)  as the Coastal Watershed Supervisor. In this role, she provides assistance to municipalities, non-profit organizations, and others to develop, implement, and measure the success of watershed restoration and protection projects in New Hampshire’s coastal watershed. Sally has worked for DES for over fifteen years and has managed a variety of projects to address nonpoint source pollution. Prior to her work at DES, Sally worked as the Education Director for the Nashua River Watershed Association. For close to ten years, Sally has also served as a volunteer water quality monitor for the Maine Healthy Beaches Program.

Donald L. Ware, Merrimack, NH
Treasurer
Don Ware
Donald Ware is the Chief Operating Officer at Pennichuck Water. He represents the public water supplier interests on the state’s Rivers Management Advisory Committee.

Directors

Jacquie Colburn, Bar Harbor, ME
Jacquie Colburn
Jacquie gained an appreciation of the outdoors as a kid growing up in Connecticut. She had a 600-acre salt marsh in her backyard, and happily, it is still there today. She earned a degree in Natural Resources Management from the University of Connecticut and between college and graduate school, worked for environmental engineering consulting firm in Connecticut. But as a kid Jacquie was also introduced to northern New England, through vacation trips in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and in Acadia National Park in Maine. So following graduate school, she relocated to central New Hampshire. She worked as a planner for the Lakes Region Planning Commission for three years and then assumed a new position at the NH Department of Environmental Services (DES), administering DES’s Lakes Management and Protection Program. After 19 years in this role, in 2011 Jacquie assumed responsibility for NH’s rivers as well; she most recently administered the Rivers Management and Protection Program and the Lakes Program at DES. Jacquie has served on several municipals boards and commissions since moving to New Hampshire and presently she serves on the board of the Loon Preservation Committee, the Squam Lakes Association, and the New England Chapter of the North American Lake Management Society. She was also named the DES Employee of the Year in 2011. Jacquie resides in Bar Harbor with her husband Ken and Gabby, their rescue kitty. She enjoys hiking, biking, canoeing, and kayaking, and wishes she had more time to enjoy our woods, mountains, lakes, rivers, streams and ponds.Jacquie looks forward to contributing to the important progress that the Rivers Council has achieved over the past twenty-five years and hopes to help continue to build the relationship between the state, communities, and nonprofit organizations that support sound river management across the state.

Maxwell Maynard, Franklin, NH

Max Maynard is a recent graduate of Southern New Hampshire University and works in the biomonitoring program at the NH Department of Environmental Services. He volunteers with the Upper Merrimack Monitoring Program.

Steven Lowe, Canterbury, NH
Steven Lowe
Steven Lowe has been involved in rivers and streams starting as a boy learning to trout fish with his father. He and his wife Madeleine enjoyed canoeing the Merrimack River from Franklin to Concord many times after moving to Canterbury, NH in 1983. Most impressive to Steve were the abundance of hatching mayflies and caddisflies that indicate good water quality. Even more surprising was the feedback he received from many locals who still regarded the river as a sewer. From that flourished a passion for promoting the river and supporting the removal of the Sewall Falls dam. While already a member of Trout Unlimited and Ducks Unlimited Steven decided to increase his local involvement and became an early volunteer of the Upper Merrimack River Local Advisory Committee (UMRLAC). In the 1990s Steven and Madeleine started their own technical consulting business, Lowe Temperature Solutions, Inc. and raised their two sons. Now as he transitions to an empty nester Steve has been filling his time with UMRLAC rock baskets and ’Bug Nights’, NH Fish & Game salmon program and stream surveys, and TU’s ’Trout in the classroom program.’ As a Director of the Rivers Council Steve hopes to protect New Hampshire’s rivers for the future and to educate young and old in the value and importance of New Hampshire’s rivers and streams.

James Plummer, Hollis, NH
Jake Plummer
James is an Environmental Analyst at the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission (NEIWPCC), serving as lead on the Nonpoint Source Workgroup and coordination of NEIWPCC’s Annual NPS Conference. Before joining NEIWPCC full time, James coordinated NEIWPCC’s Youth and the Environment Program for two summers as an intern. James holds a B.S. in Biology from the University of Tampa and is an Eagle Scout from Hollis Troop 12.

Rob Roseen, Stratham, NH
Rob Roseen and Buck
Robert Roseen, PHD., D.WRE, PE: Dr. Robert Roseen is the Principal and Founder of Waterstone Engineering. Rob has many years of experience in water resources investigations. Rob has a long-standing passion for the protection of rivers and riparian ecosystems. Rob worked with the Southern Rockies Ecosystem project to support the report for the Wild and Scenic River designation of the South Platte River in Colorado and to support the 1996 creation of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Rob has studied many aspects of riparian buffers, land resource management, timber harvesting, grazing rights, and development on private and public lands. More recently he has led numerous studies examining land use and climate change impacts upon municipal flooding and the role of Green Infrastructure as a municipal adaptation measure for damage and cost avoidance. Rob is a recognized industry leader in green infrastructure and watershed management, and the recipient of 2010 and 2016 Environmental Merit Awards by the US Environmental Protection Agency Region 1. He directed the University of New Hampshire Stormwater Center for 10 years and is deeply versed in the practice, policy, and planning of stormwater management. Rob chaired the 2016 ASCE International Low Impact Development Conference in Portland. Rob is a licensed professional engineer in NH, ME and MA.

Thomas Swenson, Concord, NH
Thomas Swenson
Tom Swenson works for the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services in the Watershed Management Bureau. In his current role as Assistant Program Coordinator, he provides support for multiple programs such as the Volunteer Lakes Assessment Program and the Volunteer Rivers Assessment Program. Prior to his current position, he interned with the Trophic Lake Program for several years in the Jody Connor Limnology Center.

Frank Tupper, Canterbury, NH

Frank Tupper, former NH State Representative and Canterbury Town Selectmen, brings valuable experience and knowledge to the Council after having served on the Resources, Recreation, and Development House Committee as well as the Environment and Agriculture Committee. His love for water and fishing has been life long, spanning all the way to Alaska. Frank enjoyed fishing for a living in Alaska, working as a special education teacher, and producing documentary videos. Frank led the fight to keep a large solid waste landfill off the shores of the Merrimack River.

HONORARY DIRECTORS

Stephen Blackmer, Canterbury, NH
Camilla Lockwood, Temple, NH
Patricia Schlesinger, New Hampton, NH
Kelly Short, Canterbury, NH

CONTRACTOR

Carl Paulsen, Dover, NH
Fundraising and Membership Services Consultant