Mountain bikers and water officials are currently at odds over access to off-road trails in Massachusetts Water Resources Authority watershed areas.

Mountain bikers and water officials are currently at odds over access to off-road trails in Massachusetts Water Resources Authority watershed areas.

“I think this is a silly argument we’re having,” said Joe Favaloro, executive director of the MWRA Advisory Board. “There’s enough land in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, so why are we arguing over drinking water protection for more than half the commonwealth?”

According to the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s land-access regulations, activities such as hiking, hunting and snowmobiling are allowed in designated sections of watershed lands. Biking is allowed on designated roads, but not on off-road trails.

Brett Russ, a member of the New England Mountain Biking Association, has been spearheading an effort to get permission to ride on narrow single-track trails in limited off-road areas. For years, he said, mountain bikers rode on trails in the Ware River Watershed without issue, but the state began ramping up enforcement of the land use regulations in 2014.

“We’ve been having an ongoing dialogue with state officials,” Russ said. “There are some interesting forces not making decisions yet based on facts. We’re trying to force them to look at facts, and if there are restrictions placed on bicycles, there must be some justification in fact beyond fear or bias.”

Mountain biking, Russ said, doesn’t impact the land any more than permitted off-road activities.

DCR Commissioner Leo Roy, however, said that’s not always the case.

“We’ve certainly done an extensive literature review and the scientific literature generally points to no real difference in environmental impacts between mountain biking and hiking on properly designed trails, but the key part of that is ‘properly designed trails,’” Roy said. “The issue in the Ware River Watershed is a number of illegal trails have been cut.”

Favaloro, who recently raised concerns over mountain biking in an editorial on the MWRA Advisory Board’s website, said riding on and creating unauthorized trails on watershed lands can lead to erosion that could threaten the safety of the drinking water supply for 2.5 million people throughout Greater Boston and sections of Eastern Massachusetts.

This map indicates the communities that receive all of their water from the MWRA in dark orange, the communities that receive part of their water supply or emergency water from the MWRA in light orange. The map also highlights both the Quabbin and Wachusett reservoirs as well as the land owned by the Department of Conservation Watershed District in the Quabbin, Ware and Wachusett watershed basins in dark green and the watershed areas in light green. Source: DCR and MWRA. Map/Caitlyn Kelleher, Wicked Local Staff

The MWRA system, which draws from the Quabbin Reservoir as well the Ware River and Wachusett Reservoir watersheds in Central Massachusetts, is one of the largest unfiltered water supply systems in the nation, Favaloro said. As a result of its unfiltered status, it is subject to strict regulations. The soil and vegetation surrounding the water, he said, act as a sort of natural filter that helps contain stormwater runoffs and keeps contaminants out of the reservoirs.

“With mountain biking, erosion is a constant,” he said. “They’re building bridges over brooks. They’re cutting down trees to make trails. Those are incubators of adding bad stuff into our drinking water.”

Russ, said that while some older bike trails from decades ago may have been improperly constructed the newer unauthorized trails were carefully built, albeit without permission from the state.

“When a trail is built, it’s the absolute minimal vegetation removed to build it,” he said. “We always look at building trails with the most minimal impact to the land.”

He still hopes a compromise can be reached.

“We would honor any buffer zones to water bodies,” he said.

Lexi Dewey, executive director of the Water Supply Citizens Advisory Committee, agrees with the prohibition on off-road biking in watersheds.

“We have nothing against biking in appropriate areas,” she said. “There are 45 state parks in Massachusetts that allow mountain biking and encourage biking.”

Roy said the DCR needs to balance both recreation and conservation concerns. While he has concerns over unauthorized mountain biking in the watersheds, he’s met with members of NEMBA and said he would accelerate the public access plan process for the Ware Watershed, providing a chance for public input on all forms of recreation there.

“If we were an all-conservation agency or an all-recreation agency, this would be easier,” Roy said. “The fact that we’re responsible for both means we have to achieve the appropriate balance.”