Unkamet Brook runs through the Crane Avenue culvert.

Fuss & O'Neill engineers Margaret Allen and Christian Boisvert speak at last week's City Council meeting about the culvert project. 

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — With help from the state, the city plans to restore Unkamet Brook between Crane and Dalton Avenue. 

This includes replacing the undersized culvert near the Jaeschke Fruit & Flowers Center. 

Pittsfield received a $275,000 Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grant in fiscal 2025 for the effort, which is expected to be done in the next five years. The aim is to correct "major" flooding into nearby properties during storm events and restore wetlands damaged by the runoff. 

"Flooding remains one of the top significant natural hazards facing the City of Pittsfield, and part of that is due to the aging stormwater infrastructure such as Crane Avenue and Dalton Avenue that can no longer convey existing storm events," Christian Boisvert, an engineer with Fuss & O’Neill, told the City Council on Tuesday.

Margaret Allen, also an engineer with Fuss & O'Neill, said the road will overtop in bigger storm events, and the wetland has "over decades of unmanaged stormwater runoff." 

The two four-foot pipes carrying the brook under Crane Avenue are filled with sediment because of the raising of the natural channel bed. A 9.7-foot-wide box culvert with a four-foot clear height is proposed with improvements that allow the water to flow freely.  

The crossing is at a low point, and there are concerns of excessive sediment in the roadways and damage to gravel driveways. An adjacent 2-acre gravel driveway was identified as a potential source of sediment, and the project proposes a trench drain and grooved pavement along it to catch debris. 

To slow and filter water flow, it proposes rain gardens in grassy islands. 

In a memo to the council, City Engineer Tyler Shedd reported that it required no funding match from the city. Pittsfield applied for FY26 funds to take the Crane Avenue crossing from conceptual design to being shovel-ready. 

"Unkamet Brook is located on the northeast side of Pittsfield and conveys runoff from Oak Hill and The Boulders south to the East Branch of the Housatonic River," MVP's project description reads. 

"The project goals are to decrease the risk of flooding, evaluate the potential for daylighting a culverted section of Unkamet Brook, and restore the segment of the brook between two culverts. The main tasks are field data collection, preliminary design of Crane Ave culvert, and the feasibility and alternatives analysis of the Dalton Ave Culvert." 

Aside from the culvert replacement, the project also evaluated daylighting 300 feet of a buried section of the brook near Dalton Avenue and aims to improve conditions in Unkamet Brook and the wetland complex.  

None of the daylighting, or opening up, possibilities were viable, as the area near Berkshire Roots runs under driveways between commercial properties with utility lines and encroaches on building foundations. 

"That would be a huge cost and sacrifice, so we consider all of these not viable as possibilities," Allen said. 

For the culvert replacement, a single lane of traffic could be left open while the other is used for construction. 

"I think the best case scenario is going to be a single lane during construction. Worst case scenario is maybe has to be closed to traffic for a period of time so that they can put the structure in," Boisvert said. 

MVP Action Grant - Unkamet Brook Restoration by Brittany Polito

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