During Phase I of the Coolbrook Restoration Project, KBS Construction mobilizes heavy equipment and skilled crews to build the planned stream restoration features. The active construction process includes regarding the stream channel to a stable, natural shape, installing grade control structures to direct flow and reduce erosion, stabilizing streambanks with rock, soil, or natural materials, and planting native vegetation along the riparian zone to strengthen banks, provide habitat, and support long-term ecological recovery.

During Phase I of the Coolbrook Restoration Project, the Construction/Implementation phase involves mobilizing heavy equipment and skilled crews to begin building the designed stream restoration features. Crews install grade control structures to manage flow and reduce erosion, regrade and stabilize streambanks to restore natural channel form, and establish native riparian plantings to support long-term ecological health. Throughout the process, best management practices for sediment and erosion control are strictly followed to protect downstream water quality and ensure regulatory compliance.

So far, we’ve restored 700 feet of stream along a small tributary. As part of the project, we’re removing polluted soil to uncover buried wetlands. We’re also reshaping the stream to include a mix of shallow, fast-moving areas and deeper, slower ones. During storms, water will naturally spill over the banks and flow into the wetlands, where it can slow down and be cleaned of excess nutrients. We’re adding brush and other natural materials to the stream to create habitats for fish, birds, and other wildlife. To protect the new streambanks, we’ve placed coconut fiber mats until we can plant native trees, shrubs, and grasses.

The Coolbrook Farm Stream Restoration is a legacy sediment removal/floodplain restoration project located on the old Taylor Farm in Lincoln, VA. Legacy sediments are sediments that have accumulated in stream valleys and floodplains over the centuries due to land clearing for farming and development. Legacy sediments can also form in former mill pond and foundry sites, similar to the history of this area.

Proposed restoration activities include the removal of the legacy sediments to the historic, pre-colonization wetland meadow condition. The current unstable, deeply incised, over-widened channel will be restored with gently sloped banks with connection to its natural floodplain to allow for dissipation of energy during storm events. Structures primarily built with onsite, natural materials will be added to the stream and stream banks for grade control, bank protection, and aquatic organism habitat.

The restoration of the stream and floodplain corridor will improve the currently impaired hydrological, biological, and ecological functions within the project area. Following construction, the site will be planted with a variety of native herbaceous, shrub, and tree species. The planting restoration will focus on a wetland meadow ecotype with disparate trees creating a lush, wetland meadow, pollinator wildflower, and grassland savannah.

The tributaries onsite drain to Crooked Run, a perennial tributary of North Fork Goose Creek. This watershed contributes to the middle, non-tidal portion of the Potomac River, eventually emptying into the Chesapeake Bay. Stream erosion through legacy sediments is identified as one of the largest contributors of sediment to the Chesapeake Bay. Early project calculations have estimated that the project will reduce up to 1,110 pounds of phosphorus, 2,225 pounds to nitrogen and more than 1.4 million pounds (704 tons) of sediment.

Partners:

Ecosystem Services – Natural Resource Consulting

Home – KBS Earthworks

Funding:

Potomac Mitigation Bank – Buying and Selling Nutrient Credits

Capitaline Ecological Partners (CEP) | Mitigation Banking

By
Fredrick Kunklen – Washington Post
January 6, 2023 at 5:00 a.m. EST

The effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay has made little overall progress the past two years, with improvements in some categories offset by stagnation or deterioration in others, a new report has found.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s biennial State of the Bay report found that oyster harvests hit record numbers in the previous two years in Maryland and Virginia, and the bay’s low-oxygen “dead zone” was among the smallest
recorded since monitoring began 38years ago — and yet the population of blue crabs plummeted to such worrisome levels that the organization suggested reassessing how crabs are managed.

Meanwhile, long-standing efforts to protect the bay’s wetlands by creating buffers and planting trees have languished, with several states falling behind goals as tens of thousands of acres of open land in the watershed have been plowed under for urban and suburban development.
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“I know that some of this news is frustrating to some, and I will count myself in this list,” Hilary Harp Falk, the bay foundation’s president and chief executive, said during a news briefing. “While we’ve made significant progress, far too much pollution still reaches our waterways.”

The environmental nonprofit’s report is yet another sign that state and federal efforts to restore the bay by achieving several measurable targets by 2025 will probably fall short. The report assesses 13 indicators of the bay’s health in three categories — pollution, habitat and fisheries — and grades each of them on a scale of 100. In 2022, the overall score remained at 32, as in 2020, with three indicators higher, three lower and seven unchanged.

A perfect score would theoretically reflect what the bay was like when Europeans arrived more than 400 years ago, before industrialization and development, the report says. Hitting 70 would be considered a sign of restoration.

Levels of phosphorous and nitrogen — two naturally occurring chemicals that feed algae blooms and create huge dead zones in the bay — fell below 10-year averages in 2021, thanks largely to upgrades of wastewater treatment plants. But the report says more must be done to reduce these pollutants by limiting agricultural and urban-suburban runoff, an effort that will require additional government funding and cooperation from farmers, including small family farms in the watershed.

Levels of durable industrial pollutants such as mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls in the Chesapeake remain about the same, according to the report. But the detection of newer and less understood pollutants in the water, such as PFAS — so-called
“forever chemicals” composed of per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds — pose additional problems.

Global warming has complicated rescue efforts further, as rising sea levels inundate wetlands and more intense storms rip up underwater grasses that shelter aquatic life and oxygenate the water, the report says.

Warmer water also holds less oxygen, a phenomenon documented in a recent study that has offset the benefits of some restoration efforts, said Beth McGee, the bay foundation’s director of science and agricultural policy.

The report says several strategies that could clean the water have been shown to work, but regional governments need to do more to implement them. One of the most cost-effective is planting trees in buffer zones along streams and wetlands, McGee said.

Trees shade stream beds, cooling the water, and they absorb carbon from the atmosphere to reduce global warming. Yet, McGee told reporters, the bay states are “woefully behind” on their targets for forested buffers.

The foundation’s report comes as two members of Maryland’s congressional delegation hope to spotlight the nation’s largest estuary and incorporate the watershed into the national park system by creating the Chesapeake National Recreation Area.

See original article at Chesapeake Bay cleanup stalls as blue crabs drop and pollutants remain – The Washington Post

One man has collected more than 8,000 pounds of acorns for Virginia

]]> https://potomacmitigation.com/blog/potomac-mitigation-awarded-nutrient-credit-bid-for-the-town-of-leesburg/ Mon, 14 Nov 2022 16:31:12 +0000 https://potomacmitigation.com/?p=325

The Potomac Mitigation Bank was the successful bidder for the nutrient credits needed for the Town of Leesburg, Morven Park Sideway Project.