Spout Run Restoration begins below Millwood

Stream restoration specialist, Seth Coffman, from Trout Unlimited describes progress on the first targeted streambank restoration project on Spout Run, just below Millwood and the Carter Hall spring.

In May of 2013, we captured video of Seth and James Fulcher recording topographic information as we witnessed the severity of the vertical and incised banks which contribute heavily to the sedimentation of the stream. The before-and-after segments in the latest video journal entry show the remarkable improvement and future benefits of this work in progress.

C Spout Run to be featured at Water Quality Summit

vcwq-poster
Virginia Citizens for Water Quality (VCWO) presents “The Muddy Mystery” —2013 Annual Summit and Movie, (Union First Market Bankshares, Ruther Glen, Virginia) – November 9, 2013.

Join our project team representatives Nesha McRae (VADEQ), Seth Coffman (TU), and Bill Howard (The Downstream Project- TDP) who will be presenting a keynote address—C Spout Run: Inspiring Successful Watershed Planning in the Shenandoah Valley.

Learn and enjoy from other partner groups and the state offering presentations focused on uncovering the mystery of runoff pollution.

Registration is now open! $15 includes lunch and refreshments.

Check out the draft agenda by clicking –> here.

Register online here:
https://www.elleevance.com/beventLive.aspx?EventID=NBI15646650

Questions? Contact Anna Mathis at amathis@allianceforthebay.org or 804-775-0951.

Map Link to venue.

Citizen scientists get their feet wet

For the past few weeks, Gem Bingol of the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) has been wading into the waters of Westbrook and Roseville Runs with citizen volunteers to monitor stream health.  She and her volunteers share some of their experiences in a new video produced by The Downstream Project.

Both Westbrook and Roseville Run feed into Spout Run, a tributary of the Shenandoah River that is on Virginia’s Impaired Waters list for bacteria and for aquatic life. “Impaired” means that bacteria pollution levels in Spout Run are so high, it doesn’t meet state or federal standards for fishing or swimming. The stream also has so much sediment that many bottom-dwelling insects and other small creatures eaten by fish can’t survive.  With leadership from PEC, The Downstream Project (TDP), Friends of the Shenandoah and other community partners, Clarke County citizens are now working to restore the watershed as part of the C-Spout Run restoration project, and remove it from the Impaired Waters list by 2025.

With input from local residents and these groups, the state of Virginia has come up with a plan to restore Spout Run. The plan is now underway, but judging its success will be difficult without some indicators along the way.  That’s where citizen monitoring comes in.   Gem and her teams are looking for benthic macroinvertebrates – insects, crustaceans, worms, snails and clams that live on the bottom of streams – to see what kind of life Spout Run and its tributaries currently support.  As Gem explains in the TDP video below, some macroinvertebrates are more tolerant of pollution than others.  When she and her volunteers find a lot of critters that are tolerant, and few that are intolerant, she knows that stream conditions are harming aquatic life and will need to be improved to restore the watershed.  Benthic macroinvertebrate monitoring is particularly useful because it reveals not only the health of the streams, but also the health of the surrounding land in the watershed.  Sensitive stream creatures need all the components of a healthy stream ecosystem, including shade trees and plants along waterways.  When a watershed doesn’t have enough vegetation along its streams, many benthic macroinvertebrates will disappear.

But crawly creatures aren’t the only way to measure stream health.  As volunteer (and a director of the Lord Fairfax Soil and Water Conservation Service) Wayne Webb notes in the video, Friends of the Shenandoah River has been measuring actual pollution levels at key monitoring locations on the Shenandoah for years.  Those pollutants include nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment from fertilizer, livestock and erosion.  Collecting both kinds of information at the same sites in Spout Run over time will help identify baseline conditions, point to potential sources of the problems, and reveal if corrective measures solve the problems.

It takes a lot of feet to cover the 14 miles of stream in the Spout Run watershed.  To attend a training session and become a citizen scientist contact Gem Bingol at gbingol@pecva.org or visit the FOSR website.

Sustainable Landscaping Workshop

butterflyBring Butterflies and Birds
Invest in Your Garden to
Save Money, Time & Energy

Date: Thursday, June 13th
Time: 7pm – 9pm
Where: Boyce Elementary School–Library

Experts from Blandy, Lord Fairfax Soil and Water Conservation District and Master Naturalists will share information about sustainable landscaping and yard care practices, garden ecology and backyard habitat creation—with an emphasis on Monarch butterflies. Discover how and why you can benefit by changing the way you care for your property and how that can help the local environment as we work to clean up Spout Run in Clarke County.

This program is completely free of charge and is brought to you by the Piedmont Environmental Council in cooperation with Clarke County and a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Please contact Gem Bingol at (703) 431-6941 or gbingol@pecva.org to sign up, or get more information about the program.

Trout raised in Powhatan classroom released to Spout Run

Powhatan School
May 14, 2013

Follow this blog post and check out the video of students at Powhatan School, with the help of Mark Zimmerman of Trout Unlimited, celebrate the release of several young “fingerling” brook trout, raised from eggs in the classroom, into Spout Run. Tracy Smith, who served as the parent coordinator of this valuable educational program, explains the importance of this 7th grade service project.

This flagship program of Trout Unlimited’s Youth Education efforts, Trout (or Salmon) in the Classroom (TIC or SIC) offers students of all ages a chance to raise salmonids in a classroom setting and then release them into a nearby stream or river. Caring for the fish starts to foster a conservation ethic in the students, and the act of walking to a streambank and directly releasing the fish into the water makes a concrete connection between caring for the fish and caring for the water.

Restoration Planning: TU topographic studies

Stream restoration specialists, Seth Coffman and James Fulcher, from Trout Unlimited take elevation and survey measurements to develop a targeted restoration plan for the stream below Millwood at Carter Hall.

Tall vertical banks contribute a tremendous amount of sediment to Spout Run and the restoration plan will ease the height and slope in targeted locations. Plantings will also help to stabilize the ground to minimize soil erosion.

Clarke County Stream Monitoring Program Training and Certification

Screen Shot 2013-02-28 at 8.16.13 AMDate: Rescheduled for April 13 at 1:00 p.m.

Location: Powhatan School, streamside at Page Brook Run, by the bridge to the ball fields. Park in the back parking lot.

Learn how to perform the collection method for the Virginia Save Our Streams Protocol. Take the opportunity to become certified as a stream monitor afterwards.

Location: Powhatan School, streamside at Page Brook Run, by the bridge to the ball fields. Park in the back parking lot.

Bring: boots and notes from past classes, if you have them.

More for our instructor:

Hello Stream Monitors!

In-stream  training demonstration and practice will come first, followed by an opportunity to take the test to be certified.

For those who are unable to attend on the 9th, or need to retake the test, there will be an additional streamside training and certification opportunity in April, date TBD. Please let me know if you cannot make it on the 9th, but are still interested in becoming certified.

If you attended the classroom training, please remember to bring your notes. If you did not attend, I will have ID sheets available.
Please wear/bring boots or waders, as you will need to get in the stream in order to demonstrate proper collection technique.
If you’d like to have more opportunity to look at bugs online, you can check out these resources:

http://www.dep.wv.gov/WWE/getinvolved/sos/Documents/Benthic/AquaticInvertGuide.pdf
  — describes the characteristics of the various invertebrates that can be found.

http://www.dep.wv.gov/WWE/getinvolved/sos/macros/Pages/Benthos.aspx
  —  excellent set of pictures of each type of critter that you might find in the stream that you would have to identify.  It includes a wide variety of Mayflies, Stoneflies and Caddisflies with their specific characteristics visible.

http://www.rayswords.com/bugs/bugs.htm
  This is a fun site if you’d like to practice testing yourself–it’s an online test based on photos–doesn’t cover everything, but a good variety.
And there are lots of keys for Identification online.  If you google benthic macroinvertebrates or benthic macroinvertebrate key  you could spend a long time checking them all out and find your own favorites.
As a follow-up thought to our last class, you may be interested in getting a little more information about the taxonomy  of the various macroinvertebrates that you will see in the stream.
Here’s a link to a taxonomic chart that shows the various invertebrates that we specifically count during a monitoring session:
In the Virginia SOS protocol, there are several macros which you are not required to identify beyond the Class level. And in no case does the protocol require identification past the Order level, though there is a fascinating diversity of Mayflies, Stoneflies and Caddisflies which are the three most sensitive macros you will find.
There’s a short slide show at this link which describes benthic macroinvertebrates and the “jobs” that they have in a stream.
I look forward to seeing you on March 9th!
Best,
Gem Bingol
Loudoun & Clarke Field Officer
Piedmont Environmental Council
703-431-6941 (cell)

Become a stream monitor

SRJ Monitoring Class Promo

(First training class February 12, 7:00 p.m., at the Boyce Firehall. Second Session: Saturday March 9th at 1 p.m. Location: Powhatan School, streamside at Page Brook Run, by the bridge to the ball fields. Park in the back parking lot. Bring: boots and notes from past classes if you have them.)

C Spout Run is looking for volunteers to help monitor the health of our stream and the progress of restoration efforts. Sampling bottom-dwelling (benthic) critters is one of the best (and most fun) ways to measure stream health. This is your chance to get your feet wet, learn a fascinating new skill, and help our watershed.

Gem Bingol of the Piedmont Environmental Council will be leading a free certification course in benthic macroinvertebrate testing.

Please come to the Boyce Firehall on February 12 at 7:00 p.m. for more information and take the classroom portion of your certification. A one-day streamside training class will take place in March (when it’s a little warmer).

Watch The Spout Run Journal: An Invitation to Stream Monitoring

Clarke County Recipient of NFWF Small Watershed Grant

Clarke County, Va. will receive $141,600 (plus $87,800 in matching funds) to improve water quality and restore eastern brook trout habitat in Spout Run by working with farmers and residential landowners to stabilize stream banks, install fencing and convert turf to trees. As a partner in this effort, The Downstream Project videotaped the NFWF press conference in Arlington, Virginia.

Watch Announcement: remarks by David O’Neill, Eastern Partnership Office Director, NFWF; Jeffrey Corbin, Senior Advisor for the Chesapeake Bay and the Anacostia River, U.S. EPA; The Honorable James P. “Jim” Moran, U.S. Representative

NFWF News Release (download PDF)
ALL NFWF Grant Recipients (download PDF)

[Read more…]

Chesapeake Bay Foundation Supports Spout Run Cleanup

Clarke Daily News

Dear Editor,

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation congratulates everyone engaged in the Spout Run watershed cleanup. It takes just such communitywide, public-private partnerships to restore local streams, as all of us contribute in some way to the pollution of our waterways, and all of us can play a role in cleaning them up. The Spout Run partners are to be commended for moving forward to restore clean water to their community, those downstream, and ultimately to the Chesapeake Bay.

Success will mean a healthier, safer stream, a more vibrant local economy, and better quality of life for local residents and future generations. Kudos to all involved: Clarke County, local residents, farmers, Trout Unlimited, Lord Fairfax Soil and Water Conservation District, The Downstream Project, Piedmont Environmental Council, Friends of the Shenandoah River, and the Virginia Departments of Environmental Quality and Conservation and Recreation.

Ann F. Jennings
Virginia Executive Director
Chesapeake Bay Foundation