ANTHONY REYES Northwest Arkansas Times Bill McCoy, with Elk River Construction based in Pagosa Springs, Colo., stacks rocks to repair the bank in an unnamed creek that runs through Gulley Park Thursday in Fayetteville. The company has been contracted to perform work necessary to keep excessive bank erosion from occurring along the creek.The city of Fayetteville is working with the Watershed Conservation Resource Center to restore a 1, 200-foot section of an unnamed tributary of Mud Creek, which flows through Gulley Park and is located in the Illinois River watershed.
Restoration work begins on Gulley Park stream
BY SUSANNAH PATTON Northwest Arkansas Times
Posted on Friday, August 15, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/News/68122
The city of Fayetteville is working with the Watershed Conservation Resource Center to restore a 1, 200-foot section of an unnamed tributary of Mud Creek, which flows through Gulley Park and is in the Illinois River watershed.
According to City Engineer Ron Petrie, land use changes upstream from the site have impacted the stability of the channel over the years. The section of the tributary has several banks eroding into parkland, contributing to excessive sediment in the stream through lateral erosion.
The main purpose of the restoration is to stabilize the whole creek system through the park and improve the safety of the creek, Petrie said.
“ We have some high drop-offs in the area, some of them 8 feet high, where children are playing, ” he said. “ We know it’s going to continue to erode if we do nothing, which will damage the park and continue to hurt any type of habitat in the creek. ”
The project is being funded through an Environmental Protection Agency grant awarded to the resource center and the city through the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission.
It’s a cost-share project, Petrie said, with the city paying $ 141, 200 of the total cost of $ 262, 200.
The Watershed Conservation Resource Center has designed a natural channel that will reduce sediment from the banks, stabilize the banks and enhance the aquatic habitat.
Approximately 450 feet of stream bank is being stabilized by constructing rock structures and other features that will deflect flow away from banks. Rock clusters are being used to create additional habitat features.
Matthew Van Eps, associate director of the resource center, said the company doing the restoration work is Elk River Construction of Pagosa Springs, Colo.
“ They have been doing stream restoration work for 15 years for one of the leading stream restoration practitioners, Dave Rosgren, ” he said. “ This is one of our first projects so we wanted to make sure we got someone exceptionally well-qualified to do the project. ”
Van Eps said the project is designed to achieve multiple goals. It will address the city’s concern, he said, which is the safety aspect with the creek being adjacent to walking trails, and the resource center’s goals.
“ Our interest in the restoration project is to reduce sedimentation associated with stream bank erosion, ” he said. “ The sediment has an impact both in the local sense, right there in the stream, and it also impacts the Illinois River watershed, which is one of the primary watersheds in Northwest Arkansas.
“ Reducing sediment improves the water quality, the aquatic habitat and the general ecology of the stream. ”
The city is also working on a project to restore about 1, 000 feet of an unnamed tributar y of Hamestring Creek in Red Oak Park.
The developers of Ruskin Heights donated 1, 200 tons of rock for both projects, resulting in a cost savings to the city of about $ 33, 600.
Rocks of the same size and shape from a quarry would have cost the city $ 30 per ton for a total of $ 36, 000. The city paid $ 2 per ton to transport the rocks from Ruskin Heights for a total of $ 2, 400.
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2 comments:
if it looks like that, then everyone who was at that Ward Four meeting where we voted for that project instead of trying to get the neighbors to create rain gardens will be saying we should have listened to you more seriously.
This is not the final phase of the project. I would venture to guess this image from day 1. There will a beautification process soon after the stream bank and water flow correction have been implemented is my guess.
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