Guiding Principles

How can the museum remain RESILIENT?

Resilience is the ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficult events. For a landscape, this often means sustaining ecological functions over time. When storms occur, can Strawbery Banke Museum manage excess water without disrupting day-to-day activities or causing long-term damage to their facilities?

The goal is not to prevent flooding, but rather to reduce the amount of human intervention required to manage its flow and avoid costly clean-up after the rain subsides. Anticipating opportunities to use natural systems will position the museum to embrace future floods.

The Plan will address localized drainage problems under current conditions and future challenges based upon the “latest projections of sea-level rise, coastal storms, groundwater rise, precipitation, and freshwater flooding for coastal New Hampshire,” per the 2019 NH Coastal Flood Risk Summary Part 1: Science -pg.1.

As the museum builds a more resilient infrastructure, a guiding principle will be to distribute the stormwater burden across the campus.

How do we preserve HISTORY?

Over one hundred years ago, the Puddle Dock tidal inlet brought the center of commerce to what is today Strawbery Banke Museum. Evidence of rising groundwater infiltrating the museum buildings now recalls the neighborhood’s original relationship to the Piscataqua River. How will it be possible to make this history visible to the modern visitor while simultaneously keeping culturally significant artifacts safe from the water?

To preserve the history of this coastal New England waterfront neighborhood, the Plan will integrate historic preservation requirements and adaptive stormwater management strategies to provide a flexible toolkit for how best to employ the museum’s resources moving forward.

How can we EDUCATE the public?

The water management issues that Strawbery Banke Museum faces are not unique. Many coastal communities are beginning to confront the challenges of sea level rise, groundwater rise, and storm surge. Strawbery Banke Museum has a unique platform to showcase a variety of practices to embrace and adapt to the water. As a living history museum, Strawbery Banke’s unfolding adaptation to climate change may be the next chapter.

Implementation of stormwater initiatives should consider public outreach and educational opportunities to share in a broader context on how individuals, towns, cities, and regions can best adapt to protect our natural and cultural resources, all while “keeping history above water.”

How can we be a role model for our COMMUNITY?

Strawbery Banke Museum exists today because the Portsmouth community recognized the importance of preserving the Puddle Dock neighborhood. Now, the museum is taking a new opportunity to inspire peers and demonstrate how adaptation can be applied to preservation. The intent is to be a leader, to take proactive steps that inspire action for similar communities up and down the coast. Strawbery Banke Museum is invested in being part of solutions for a resilient coast.

This work will require community involvement, commitment, and collaboration. Recognizing that communities in seacoast New Hampshire will confront the future challenges together, Strawbery Banke Museum will be an instrumental leader to serve as a platform for sharing ideas, solutions, and lessons learned.

Goals

The following goals are established to mitigate local flooding on the campus in the short term and create a more sustainable and resilient Strawbery Banke Campus in the long term, while respecting and preserving the historic character. The goals address stormwater management both within the campus (on-campus) and outside of the campus in the surrounding neighborhoods (off-campus).

ON-CAMPUS

• Identify opportunities to reduce localized flooding.

• Manage, control and move water through the campus.

• Reduce erosion along internal roadways surface materials while preserving historic character.

• Redesign the campus use areas (ice rink, open space, parking lot, entrances, etc.) to embrace stormwater runoff.

• Incorporate educational components during each phase of implementation.

• Seek grant funding along with other funding sources.

OFF-CAMPUS

• Eliminate off-site contributing stormwater runoff by diverting it or disconnecting it from the campus.

• Continue to work with the City to implement stormwater controls and improvements to the contributing roadways and drainage infrastructure.

In order to meet these goals, a number of projects, both on and off campus, have been recommended for implementation as part of this Plan and are described in Strategies and Opportunities.

It is also necessary to preserve usable open spaces, which are highly valuable for museum events and the Labrie Family Skate at Puddle Dock Pond. It is also possible that buried archaeological artifacts may inhibit the museum’s ability to implement stormwater solutions throughout the campus.

For example the stormwater goals might be integrated into a near-term parking lot project, or the parking lot might be part of a larger initiative to deal with localized flooding in the open lawn. Another project may be landscape centric to create a swale on the northeast side of the campus that could help stabilize the circulation path for visitors while also helping to mitigate flooding on the lawn. Lastly, some projects may require coordination with the City of Portsmouth and offer benefits to both parties.