City Streams Benefit From Volunteers

For the health of Blackwater Creek and its watershed, it’s a start. That’s the emphasis placed by organizers on this week’s project to clean up and improve water quality in the huge watershed that empties into the James River.

Throughout the week, hundreds of volunteers have said the creek and its many tributaries are important to Lynchburg and to the river, which is the city’s chief natural resource. The project, known as Extreme Stream Makeover, is sponsored by the James River Association.

The effort involves more than a half-dozen projects along or near streams. The projects, such as planting stream buffers along Ivy Creek in Peaksview Park and improving a storm-water retention pond at the Wards Crossing shopping center, ultimately will improve water quality in the streams.

Volunteers are also working to restore stream banks, pick up trash and plant rain gardens that filter out pollutants from storm water before it enters the streams. Those projects are being carried out at Peaksview Park, along Wards Road and at Jefferson Forest High School.

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Why is the stream makeover even necessary? Over the years, heavy earth-moving equipment has done its work upstream in the watershed, building roads first and then the houses and apartments that were constructed near the roads. More roads and wider roads came later. Shopping centers followed them, along with even a new university.

All that construction has choked the tributaries of Blackwater Creek, including Burton, Tomahawk, Dreaming and Ivy creeks, with sediment that has run off and with pollutants associated with the intense development. All major streams in the watershed are considered impaired by the state Department of Environmental Quality because of high levels of e. coli bacteria. The streams also bear scars from large amounts of storm water rushing through and other impacts from development.

Michelle Kokolis, watershed scientist with the James River Association, said she has been impressed with Lynchburg’s response to the project. “I was incredibly surprised by how willing the local companies were to donate their time and labor for these projects,” she said, adding, “we’ve never had so many people come out and say ‘we would be willing to do major work for you for free.’”

Erin Hawkins, Lynchburg environmental reviewer, helped plan the project and put it in perspective when she pointed to its public education impact. “We know the importance of this, but by bringing in volunteers and encouraging people to participate, it creates that awareness in the community.” She added that the work being done this week amounts to small projects in such a large watershed. “But you have to start somewhere.”

The many volunteers who have responded to the Extreme Stream Makeover are a credit to Lynchburg and the region. It shows their reverence for clean, healthy streams that flow into the James River. The effort also reflects their value of the river as a resource that’s part of the region’s natural heritage. May their numbers grow to the point that the streams — and the river — regain the natural health and beauty they once enjoyed.