Wednesday, June 10th, 2020
Creek gets new life
Project aims to reduce flooding, improve water quality
By Nancy Allen
Photo by Ryan Snyder/The Daily Standard
At left is a March 26, 2019, photo of Beaver Creek at the Mercer County Elks golf course at the beginning of a stream restoration project. Trees had already been taken down at the site. At right is a photo of the completed project taken Tuesday.
A public tour of a restored portion of Beaver Creek at the Mercer County Elks golf course on U.S. 127 will be held on July 2.
The event, hosted by the Mercer County Ag Education Series, will be available for signup until the 60 slots available have been filled, said Ag Solutions Coordinator Theresa Dirksen.
The work was completed in an effort to improve water quality in the Grand Lake Watershed and to improve the creek's floodplain and reduce flooding through this west branch of the creek, Dirksen said. During large rain events, the golf course would flood and result in a large amount of corn stalk debris washing up in areas on the course.
The $470,000 project was funded through a $285,000 Ohio EPA 319 grant and public and private funding from the Lake Improvement Association, Lake Restoration Commission, Mercer SWCD, county commissioners, the golf course, Republic Services and the Electric Power Research Institute.
The project entailed restoring about 2,000 feet of the creek to a natural channel design and building a new floodplain. The natural design promotes flood control, improves habitat and increases water quality, Dirksen said. More than 1,200 new native trees and shrubs and native grasses also were planted in the 5-acre project area.
Dirksen said the county first approached the Elks in about 2011 or so to do the project and several attempts to secure a grant were made. The county secured the grant in 2018. The nonprofit Lake Improvement Association strongly encouraged the county to approach the golf course again in early 2018 to proceed with the project. The tree removal phase began in December 2018 and was completed by March 2019. Earthmoving began in June 2019 and the project was completed in September.
The stream was in poor condition before the project was completed, Dirksen said. It had severe channel cutting, poor substrate (the material that rests at the bottom of a stream), stagnant flow, a poor floodplain and plant buffer diversity and density.
The project returned the creek to a functional stream. The rebuilt floodplain and new vegetation added a treatment zone for nutrient assimilation in the Beaver Creek watershed.
"Nearly none of the ditches in Mercer County have a functional floodplain other than the St. Marys River," Dirksen said. "Most have been removed and are farmed or the ditches were simply man-made with no floodplain. That is why the golf course was experiencing flooding out of the banks and onto their course."
Dirksen said expanding the stream corridor from 40-feet wide to approximately 120-feet wide restored the floodplain.
"When we had heavy rains this spring in late March and early April, you could see evidence as to how high the water had gotten in this restored section, but it didn't get out of the new top bank," she said.
Public invited:
Guided 30-minute walking tours of the site will be held in groups of 10 people or less 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on July 2.
Call the Mercer County Soil and Water Conservation District at 419-586-3289, ext. 3, to reserve a time.
Refreshments will be available.
