Adirondacks flood control effort - worry over pollution concerns

[Peakbagr]

http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/High-anxiety-in-High-Peaks-2194133.php

 

[Mikie]

The EPA has just shown up in force in the Catskills this week. Lots of equipment, trucks, and people.

 

[peakbagger]

There are simliar comments comments in VT, many regulations were waived and the heavy equipment operators went to town on the stream beds.

Unfortunately the approach of digging a deep ditch in the stream bed and mounding up rocks on the sides of channels is the "easy" approach that ends up increasing the velocity of the stream and inevitably causing more damage when the water finds its way through a weak spot. A lot of the approaches to trout habitant restoration run contrary to this method as much of the trout effort is introducing snags in the channels and along the sides of the stream to reduce the velocity of the stream and introduce pools.

 

[JoeCedar]

I have seen their "restoration" on several brooks. They drive an excavator or bulldozer into the stream, then move the larger rocks to the sides to form walls, leaving the center a clear and fast-running channel. I expect this was necessary and prudent in some cases with extensive damage and stream-widening, but not all.

 

[Peakbagr]

Speaking strictly from the standpoint of aquatic life in dredged streams.

One of the main food sources for all species of trout are the flies that hatch in streams. Mayflies, stone flies and caddis flies mate in the air and lay their eggs in the water where the eggs attach to the underside of rocks. The following year those eggs turn into nymphs, float to the top of streams, hatch and emerge into the air and trees surrounding the streams. The fish feed on all stages of the insect life.

The necessary dredging of the stream beds will have inevitably damaged and killed many of next year's generation, the ones the flooding didn't already get.
But by widening and deepening the stream channel, heavy thunderstorms will generate a flow that will overwhelm not only the trout living in the streams but will blast the insect population downstream.
Besides the impact on the fish, there is the financial impact from the fisherman who travel to the ADKs specifically to fish the Ausable and its tributaries.
I know this sounds like small potatoes in the grand scheme given the the damage to the towns and lives in the area, but something that should be considered in trying to put things back together in the ADKs and Catskills.

 

[JoeCedar]

Guest Editorial on this subject in the Lake Placid New by Naj Wikoff HERE.

 

[Tom Rankin]

Guest Editorial on this subject in the Lake Placid New by Naj Wikoff HERE.

While they make a valid point, how many feet of each river/stream are being reshaped?

 

[Nif]

I'm not sure what's happening everywhere, but I live in what was a closed off town, surrounded by the remains of roads, bridges, and rivers on all sides. What I have seen by me is that the path of the big rivers during the flooding gouged wide swaths.

The sides are pretty sandy in some cases. They are now much, much wider than they had been in the past. Even as of yesterday, Thursday night's rain caused more sliding off the hill sides from the ground that remains unstable. There are piles of boulders and dirt where there never were before and voids where there used to be boulders and dirt. What I see is the road crews moving this type of stuff around and bringing in fill from local gravel pits. There's just so much rock they will never clear it all. I see them doing what they need to to get some infrastructure back, but not complete dredge outs. Again this is the big rivers I drive by daily.

On the smaller streams its harder to say. There were so many affected. I've seen streams and brooks with what is probably dredging in sections as they cleared the debris. They didn't put back deep channels though, just cleaned out the bed. One of the things that amazed me in the first days after was how many people actually own their own backhoe's and bulldozers in this area. Must of the effort immediately after was by locals with there own equipment. Right, wrong or indifferent, these guys cleared stuff and moved stuff to make passage ways in and out. Probably not to anybody's code.

As peakbagger said, the insects and the terrain that are both necessary for the fish. There's one picture from the flood of a beaver in the road down from me. He was out on 100 trying to escape the raging flood on it's brook. The flood cleaned house on most water based critters in general.

I'm going to pay closer attention to what they are doing around here now though just in case. We do need to keep a balance between safe passable roadways and what we're doing to the envirnoment all around us as a result.

 

[BlackSpruce]

And all the while in Vermont:


http://www.addisonindependent.com/201110feds-investigate-middlebury-river

&

http://www.addisonindependent.com/201110lincoln-digs-river-road-repair-stone

 

[TCD]

Personally, I'm glad for Governor Cuomo and common sense. People come first. Instead of writing threatening letters, massive fed agencies like the Army Core should roll up their sleeves and be here helping. Still lots of work to do.

 

[Little Rickie]

http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/High-anxiety-in-High-Peaks-2194133.php

Give the Governor a break, he recreates in the Adirondacks and knows what he's doing.

To bad no one listens to the locals. Maybe a few ice dams breaking in the winter/spring will "mess" this up like the should be.

Why can't we just leave these things alone and not arrogantly "fix" them.