We have all heard some version of this story. Someone calls the township shed to thank the crew for cutting the flooding on their property by more than half. The supervisor thanks them for the kind words and hangs up with no idea what happened. The reason the water went down was not township work at all. It happened two townships over, where a community-based watershed organization restored a stream in the same floodplain.
That is how floodplain restoration works. The engineering happens in the woods, but people feel it closer to home, in their basements, their parking lots, and their yards. When a creek is reconnected to its floodplain, it slows down, drops its sediment, and recharges the ground it moves through, helping to restore the region’s water table. A stream restoration project reaches well beyond its project boundaries. It reaches the places where we live, work, and play.
The engineering happens in the woods, but people feel it in their basements.
Let’s talk about it on October 20th
Join Matt Genchur, Dr. John Jackson, and others at the Mid-Mon Stormwater Workshop, hosted by the Fayette County Stormwater Team and H2O Headwaters to the Ohio Water Network at the Fayette County Recycling Center in Uniontown, PA. The event is free.
Register for the Free WorkshopFloodplain management, with Matt Genchur
Matt Genchur of the Pennsylvania Association of Floodplain Managers will open the discussion with a hard truth. A substantial share of today’s flood-related disaster costs, public and private, traces back to building and construction that happened in flood-prone areas decades ago without proper regulation. Wetlands were often filled and built over, then became a major liability when the floods came. So where can we turn to address these concerns? What can we do to reduce the risk, and what should we expect from our leaders? Floodplains protect us by giving floodwaters a natural place to go. As a volunteer with a watershed organization, one of the most useful things you can do is build a relationship with your community’s floodplain manager, who can help check the physical integrity of wetlands, streams, and other water features and oversee their wise management.
What does stream restoration really mean? With Dr. John Jackson
Dr. John Jackson of the Stroud Water Research Center will take on a harder question: what do we actually mean by stream restoration, and why has it so often fallen short? Over the past 25 years, the United States has delisted only a handful of streams impaired by nonpoint source pollution. That record forces some honest questions. Has our treatment been wrong? Have we not created enough change? Have we underestimated how long recovery truly takes?
Watershed-scale problems, he argues, require watershed-scale solutions. They cannot be solved by working only within the stream channel or the riparian zone. They call for a holistic approach, with communities and landowners working together, especially along small headwater streams, to address every source of pollution by putting as many effective best management practices in place as possible: gray infrastructure, soil health practices, streamside forests, and more. And because the landscape and the climate are both changing, with storms arriving more often and hitting harder, the systems we build need to be resilient and dynamic enough to respond.
Two speakers, one message. Water does not respect township lines, and our solutions cannot either. Come be part of the conversation.
