Girl Scouts Help Town Committees 

By Rob St. Germain, Contributing Writer

Never underestimate what a group of highly spirited girls can accomplish! 

In April, two Ashland Girl Scout troops used a portion of their spring break to help two town committees perform important tasks.

“Only Rain Down The Drain” reads the stenciled public alert message now displayed near storm drains (a.k.a. storm sewers or catch basins) on Concord Street and at the new Mindess School. Girl scouts from Troop 82345, assisted by parent Stephanie Greco, helped Ashland Stormwater Advisory Committee (SWAC) members with the stenciling process. 

Ashland Girl Scout Troop 62204 helping to clean up the new section of the Town Forest on April 24. From the left... Bianca Bordieri, Kayla Souppa, Vivianne Vernes.

The purpose of these storm drain messages is to alert and educate the public to NOT dispose of ANYTHING down a storm drain.  Believe it not, people pour all kinds of things -- paint, antifreeze, even left-over coffee – into the storm drain.  Those liquids poison the streams and wetlands into which the water from the storm drain flows.  Included in the long list of storm-drain horror stories is one from a nearby town where an accumulation of dog-poop bags, together with other natural debris, clogged one storm-sewer pipe so completely that it had to be replaced at a very substantial cost.  

By assisting in this stenciling process, the girls learned how water from rain and snow flows from the street to wetlands and streams. They learned about the damage that pouring anything other than water down the drain can cause, and how even washing your car near a storm drain is polluting.  This is knowledge that they can pass on to their families and others.

On Thursday of their spring break week, Ashland Girl Scout Troop 62204 led by Jill Vernes and assisted by parent Christy Bordieri, helped clean up litter and other junk from a portion of the new Town Forest land recently purchased by the town.  The grant that facilitated the purchase requires that the land be maintained in as “natural state as possible”.  Though most of this new land is clean, there were a few encroachments that needed to be remediated.  The girls cleaned one area, and a team of adult volunteers cleaned another. Together they created two large piles of junk and trash that were later removed by the DPW.  

Both groups of girls have assisted with other town projects.  Greco’s troop helped build a rain garden on the Warren School property last year.  The Vernes troop has worked on other Forest Committee projects. 

Last year they helped on a project to save some of the remaining Chestnut trees in the forest.  The process involved turning a little forest dirt into mud and spreading that mud on the trunk of the tree.  The girls, some with mud up to their elbows, then wrapped the trunk in plastic to hold the mud in place.  This is an experimental process that has proved somewhat effective in saving some of these threatened trees.  The science is that soil bacteria can, in some cases, counter the pathogen that is killing the trees.

A couple years ago this same group of girl scouts created a brochure for the town forest that highlights forest problems like dog poop on trails.  The girls also marched in the Ashland Town parade and distributed their brochure to spectators along the parade route.

Over many years, young scouts, both girl scouts and boy scouts, have done numerous projects of benefit to the town.  These young folk are an important asset of this community.  It’s a win-win for all and a lot of fun in the process.