Restoration Setback Courtesy of Hurricane Irene

The creek at 8:30 a.m. Sunday.  Though it had only been about three hours 
after the crest of the flooding,the creek had already subsided significantly--
a typical "flashy" urban stream.
 

In our heavily urbanized watershed, restoration is always going to be a challenge.  There are non-native invasive plants lurking in backyards and untended corners of commercial properties.  White-tailed deer find refuge from hunters in those same pockets of green, and then make their way under cover of darkness into the preserve to eat the trees.  Perhaps the biggest problem, though, is that every storm brings a new wave of flooding, and hurricanes like Irene create so much havoc on the floodplain that it's difficult to get trees firmly enough established to withstand the onslaught of the next big flood.

Floodwaters toppled trees protected in plastic shelters on the creek floodplain.

Our last hurricane was Floyd in 1999, so our trees have had 12 years to put down roots deep enough to remain in place. Unfortunately, between the highly competitive non-native porcelain-berry vines (Ampelopsis brevipedunculata) and the fact that many of the planted trees are growing in broken shade (cf., out in full sunlight), they tend to grow slowly.  Few had achieved a stature to allow them to stand up to floodwaters that nearly rivaled Floyd's.  So, more planting is in order over the next few years.  The pattern has become discouraging and more than a little bit disheartening.

The approach to the second-oldest stone arch bridge in the county, built in 1817.

Formerly a municipal road along the creek and now closed and  incorporated into the preserve trail system.

I don't think the municipality wept any tears about giving up the rights to this perennially flood-prone road.

For a time, the wetland (pond on the right of image) and the creek were one.

At normal flows, the wetland is 10 feet above the level of the creek.

After filling the wetland basin (left side, out of image), the creek washed away the split rail fence

and moved debris against this bench cemented deeply in the ground.

Bench and flood debris from a different angle.  Historical note: the log jammed against the bench is hollowed out.  It is a wooden water pipe used by mill workers in the mid-1800's to bring sweet water from a spring on the the hillside above the creek to one of the many water-powered mills on the banks of the creek.  Even in the mid-19th century, the creek's water had become so fouled that the mill workers needed a source of clean water.  The wooden pipe was excavated from the mucky bottom of the wetland when we restored the wetland pond a few years ago.

Part of a bird blind formerly located on the edge of the wetland.

Flood debris lodged against an access gate.

Drought, Interrupted

Floodwaters surging under a bridge built in 1817, the second oldest bridge in the county

View downstream from the bridge

The remnants of Tropical Storm Nicole surged up the East Coast lat week and brought a deluge to the Mid-Atlantic Thursday evening into very early Friday morning.  As I lay awake in the early morning hours of Friday, listening to the rain pounding ceaselessly on the roof, I imagined the trees, shrubs, and animals along the creek washing away into the Delaware River.

By dawn, the rain had all but stopped, but the water continued to rise until about noon, fed  from sources upstream.  Remarkably, while the creek rose well out of its banks and many of the roads crossing it on low bridges were impassible, there was very little apparent damage in the natural area.

The images I've included with this post are from the previous big storm along the creek last winter.  I didn't have my camera with me when I went to inspect the damage from this storm but, except for the fact that the trees in these images don't have any leaves, the scene was the same.

The news media indicated that the damage and flooding would have been a lot worse if we weren't in the midst of an officially-declared drought.  The creek was extremely low before the storm and the soil was extremely dry, both of which helped to minimize the damage. 

Flooded riparian forest