EHWA nears completion of watershed plan

Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer

Ryan Gaujot, Geologist at Canaan Valley Institute, shared his expertise on sedimentation in streams during a presentation at the third in a series of stakeholder meetings for the Elk Headwater Comprehensive Watershed Plan.

“I have been working on the aquatics team at Canaan Valley Institute for about eight years now,” Gaujot explained. “I’ve been mainly working on stream restoration projects using Natural Stream Design, or NSD, which I’m going to talk about to use to fix some of these sediment issues.”

Gaujot displayed a slideshow to show examples of sediment issues and stream restorations he has been a part of in West Virginia.

Many “fixes” for stream erosion and sedimentation are more detrimental to the stream than they are helpful, he explained.

“Pretty much the standard fix is rip rap, which is very expensive,” he said. “Another fix is to concrete everything along the bank, but as you can see, the concrete gets undermined, so armor doesn’t really work.”

A fix that Gaujot sees more often than not, is when the stream is dug out or dredged to stop flooding of the stream.

“They over-widen the channel to kind of have more capacity to handle the flood and in this situation,” he explained, showing a photograph from a commonly flooded stream, “They over-widened to account for the 25-year flood. The 25-year flood is really not the most frequent flood that delivers sediment into the river. It’s really the two-year flood that we worry about because that’s the flood that brings in the most sediment over time.

“When you over design the channel, make it wider than it needs to be, you don’t have the geometry to handle the two-year flood and route the sediment,” he continued. “What happens, the river tries to create its own sufficient hydraulic geometry within an over-widened system to route the two year flood and it’s sediment.”

Dredging is another example of a fix that doesn’t work. Dredging is similar to the over widening of streams which also takes out any natural definition in the channel.

“Here’s a classic situation,” Gaujot points out. “There’s lots of flooding in Gilmer County. They go in and they dredge, they over-widen the channel. They don’t take into account the two-year flood. This is a small stream. They carve out all the ripples and pools and make it one big stagnate channel.

“One rain event later, the river brings the sediment load in, depositing sediment so the river will actually start to carve out a new hydraulic geometry within the new confine dredge, just so the river can be efficient to route its sediment,” he continued.

Once he explained the ineffective fixes, Gaujot moved on to natural stream design.

“What we’re going to do in the natural stream design, is take the impaired reach and study the impairment based on the referenced conditions,” he said. “I go somewhere nice, one of your nice stream and find the hydraulic geometry. Then, I take that stable reach and use it as a template for the impaired reach.”

The purpose is to change the impaired reach to handle not only the two-year flood, but the 25- and 100 -year flood.

“Instead of rip-rapping this, I’m going to use natural structures, some wood and some rocks and place them in a position to turn the water instead of just armoring the bank,” he continued. “using these structures, we maintain the hydraulic geometry and add some pattern to the river.”

Using the natural elements instead of rip-rap is also more cost efficient because the materials are readily available and taken from the area around the stream.

Gaujot cautioned that without the participation of the landowner, the stream projected will never come into fruition.

“The key is in the landowner being willing,” he said. “I think the next step before assessing the money for the design, is to get some type of agreement that locks the landowner into the project.”

Usually, the landowner complies with the stream restoration because he possibly gains acreage out of the project. When a stream is impaired, it takes out the bank and floods the land, leaving the landowner with less usable acreage. With the restoration, those sections of land will return to their natural state and add to the value of the land.

Gaujot suggested ways to get a stream restoration project underway.

“If you did an assessment now, you could probably identify some projects and get a design this year,” he said.

Armed with discussion topics for the EHWA web forum, facilitator Evan Hansen of Downstream Strategies led the group of stakeholders in a brainstorming session geared toward the Comprehensive Watershed Plan.

“I want us to look at each one of these categories and try to get some more details because we want to have by the end of the next meeting is an actual document that will reflect what the group has come to a consensus on,” Hansen explained.

Categories the group focused on are; linking environmental protection with economic development, unique natural features, environmental “marketing plan” and initial ideas for technologies, policies and management strategies.

“A more unique look at this whole watershed is living lightly on the land and promoting activities that fit with that theme,” Tolly Peuleche said.

County Commissioner David Fleming said that more of a home-grown, locally produced market would be a good way to promote Peuleche’s suggesting of living lightly off the land.

“I would like to see the community buy into an understanding of using the land in an appropriate, intelligent, sustainable way,” George Bell added.

The collective also suggested having strategies so that everyone takes the group seriously and apply the practices in the future, find a way for utilities to be produced dependently with best best practices for community input and to work in cooperation with business and new developments to involve them in the CWP.

The diversity of the watershed was one of the focuses of the unique natural features. Bell said the countless numbers of species that live in the watershed are what make the area special.

Other features that add to the unique nature of the watershed include: the diverse hardwoods, the visual beauty, the refuge for endangered species and the historical landmarks within the watershed.

With all the new information provided, Hansen said a rough draft of the CWP will be posted on the forum and available at the next stakeholders’ meeting, which will be more of a fine tuning session for the plan.

The next meeting will be April 27 at 7 p.m. at the Slaty Fork Community Center.