#98 The Restoration of Meadow Creek
August 14, 2008
One of the most degraded streams in Charlottesville, Meadow Creek, will get a major restoration in 2009 when The Nature Conservancy along with its partners rebuild and restore 7000 feet between the City and County.
This show originally aired in August 14, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net
You know something is not right when you walk up to the edge of MeadowCreek behind Kmart off Hydraulic Road. The bank drops down vertically to the stream bottom where a small flow trickles over the rocks. You are not sure how close you can get because looking upstream, you can see places where high water flow from storms has tunneled into the bank leaving just a flap of grass, hinged and drooping over the edge like the unruly bangs of a boy overdue for a haircut.
And you’ve seen this kinds of washed-out bank everywhere in the watershed, and especially as you walk along the Rivanna Trails encircling Charlottesville. For years, you may have said to yourself, this can’t be right, all this dirt eroding away, headed downstream in a brown muddy mess.
But how do you ever go about fixing something like this? And can it even BE fixed?
Well it turns out that it can – or so a growing number of resource managers think – and for the last decade or so, there has been a learning curve as steep as these banks in developing the science and art of restoring streams. On this warm sunny afternoon, I’m learning about one project in the planning stages that will hopefully bring a mile and a quarter of Meadow Creek back in to equilibrium with its banks. This restoration project being undertaken by The Nature Conservancy will involve physically rebuilding the shape of the river and carefully placing structures and planting new vegetation, so that the creek should be able to withstand the damaging flows that wash down from its watershed.
And what a watershed it is! This section of Meadow Creek gathers the rain and runoff from the University below O-Hill, the stadium area, Barracks Road Shopping Center, the Giant Shopping Center, and small subdivisions flanking 29 North. Flattened and paved, it is mostly roofs and roads, asphalt and houses and lawns – all the man-made surfaces that discourage the slow infiltration of rain into the earth that is necessary for refreshing groundwater — and that reduces the volume and velocity of water from storms that are the engine of erosion. About the only good thing about all this upstream development is that there are not a lot of remaining opportunities to cut trees and further harden the earth with pavement – but even so, any restoration project has to take in to account the likely upstream changes, such as the soon- or sometime-to-be-built Albemarle Place.
Walking along the streams margin, I learn more about the Meadow Creek Stream Restoration project from Diane Frisbee of The Nature Conservancy and her colleague, Dan Sweet, a stream restoration specialist who has helped define the segments most in need of help and will be involved in designing the new channel and creating pools and riffles – building back in the curves and dips that slow the flow and create healthy habitat for the bottom of the aquatic foodchain that is presently overwhelmed by sediment-laden run-off.
Diane explains that this project is being funded by the Virginia Aquatic Resources Trust Fund – one of the mechanisms used in Virginia to ensure the “no-net-loss of wetlands” requirement of the Clean Water Act. When site development impacts wetlands, and there are no practical means of avoiding or mitigating this loss on the site, the developer may have the option to pay in to the Trust Fund to compensate for wetland loss — and this money can be used elsewhere in the State to restore important but degraded wetlands and segments of impaired streams.
It is bittersweet to think that this project equates to wetlands lost somewhere else in the state. I would not want to be in the position of Trust Fund Managers who must somehow put a replacement dollar value on these habitats. So, while this project protects and restores – and our community will have a front row seat to bringing another degraded stream back to life – we must continue our efforts to slow the water, keep in it our yards, collect it from our roofs, and let it work its way more gently downstream from our headwaters. This is one of the responsibilities of living upstream.