Stream Restoration

"We really feel this is a model that other states will want to

follow," said Penny Schmitt

Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record

By Paul Muschick

GREENSBORO, N.C.

Seven months ago, South Buffalo Creek in Hillsdale Park was a
wide, shallow, silt-filled stream with badly eroding banks: not the
healthiest setting for fish and wildlife.

Last week, ducks were paddling downstream from where a large bass had been seen, some of the first visible results of a stream restoration that is among the first projects in a new program to offset the environmental
damage caused by road construction.
"It's a pretty drastic change," said Jim Stanfill, a restoration specialist with the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources. "I've already seen a heron out here."

The Hillsdale Park work is being done to atone for streams and wetlands destroyed by building the Greensboro Urban Loop. Environmental laws require governments to replace what they pave over.
Those replacements historically have been done either at the same time or after the roadwork. And there wasn't great debate over where or how functional they were.

"They're not being located in areas where they can function properly," said Ron Ferrell, manager of the state's wetland-restoration program. "In the past, mitigation has been an isolated thing."

A program initiated this summer will change that. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and state environmental and transportation officials will require the mitigation to be done in advance.
It will begin slowly, first requiring projects that need permits in 2005 to start their mitigation work that same year. Eventually, projects will have to be completed at least seven years ahead of time. And more care will be taken to do the work in a place where it can make a difference, by pinpointing long in advance where the watershed needs improvement.

"Instead of performing foot-by-foot stream mitigation and acre-by-acre wetland mitigation as we have done in the past, we'll be working with other agencies to develop comprehensive plans to improve water quality, habitat protection for entire river basins," said state environmental Secretary Bill Ross.

Restoring wetlands is important because they both clean and absorb water -- crucial to a city like Greensboro that relies on reservoirs. The clay can filter out pollutants as they sink into the ground, Ferrell said.

Officials say the new program is the first of its kind in the nation.
"We really feel this is a model that other states will want to follow," said Penny Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Wilmington, which issues environmental permits for large road projects.

Earlier this month, the N.C. Board of Transportation spent $312,000 to buy 3,700 acres in Haw River State Park where streams and wetlands can be preserved to offset roadwork in 25 central North Carolina counties.

The program also could speed road construction. Recent federal reports have attributed delays nationwide to lengthy environmental reviews, which typically don't consider how to offset the damage until near the end of the analysis, Ferrell said.

Compensating for damage long before it occurs could eliminate one point of debate and in turn save money.

"By decreasing the delay for a project, you can build it sooner, and, therefore, inflation does not add to the cost," Ferrell said.

Restoring streams costs about $200 a foot. In Hillsdale Park, workers have rebuilt about a mile of South Buffalo Creek's banks, shaping them to permit water to flow up their sides yet not erode them when the creek rises during heavy rains.
Large rocks have been placed at strategic locations to steer the stream one way or another and to provide stream creatures with a place to live. Some sections of the creek have been made still and deep, with others shallow and fast-moving.
Vegetation has been planted along the banks to hold them together, and as many as 80,000 more plantings will occur this winter, N.C. DENR's Stanfill said.

The restoration should improve water quality in one of the most polluted streams in the state by reducing the amount of dirt that erodes into the creek. The work will not clean the water entirely, though, Stanfill said, because pollutants could still flow into it upstream.

Contact Paul Muschick at 883-4422, Ext. 231, or pmuschick@news-record.com