Lancaster County leads state in stream restoration projects
Source: Lancaster News Paper - Lancaster Online - Published October 29th, 2023
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff from Maine to Virginia admire a restored section of Fishing Creek near Holtwood.
Lancaster County’s intense farming has become both a blessing and a curse.
Some of the richest soil on earth has earned the county the nationally known “Garden Spot” moniker. But no other county in the six states and District of Columbia that drain into the Chesapeake Bay delivers such a harmful blow of polluting soil and nutrients to ongoing efforts to improve the Bay.
As a result, Lancaster County has a target on its back. But that bull’s eye is also making the county a magnet for stream restorations and accompanying streamside buffers of native plants, trees and shrubs that are clearing up our streams.
In just the last five years, 62 stream-restoration projects have been done throughout the county, totaling nearly 15 miles, according to the Lancaster County Conservation District. And that’s not counting all the tree-planting along streamsides that don’t include in-stream work.
And the rate of projects is growing.
While five years ago there might be five or six completed in the county each year, now there are 12 to 18, said Matt Kofroth, assistant district manager and longtime watershed coordinator with the conservation district. Mandatory stormwater controls in urban areas is one reason for the uptick, he noted.
“We have close to a year’s worth permitted for this year in Lancaster County and probably another year’s worth in the permit phase. Almost every week we have another landowner call and say, ‘Hey, I have a stream for you to look at,’” said Adam Smith, a fish and wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pennsylvania office. The federal agency’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife program has been involved in many stream restorations in Lancaster County.
When 35 biologists and employees of the program from Maine to Virginia gathered recently in State College and wanted to see examples of successful stream restorations, they piled into a bus and headed for Lancaster County.
First, they expanded their horizons by consuming shoofly pie at Camp Andrews, a Christian-based summer retreat in southern Lancaster County, then meandered down to Fishing Creek, a high-quality coldwater stream.
There, a once badly eroded section had been reinvigorated into a healthy ecosystem that no longer sends polluting sediment and nutrients down the Susquehanna and into the bay.
Later in the day, the group was bused to eastern Lancaster County to see a restored segment of Indian Spring Run that flowed smack through the middle of a crop field of a Plain sect farmer.
With the farmer’s encouragement, the stream banks have been stabilized and the waterway restored through earth moving and the planting of native trees and shrubs along each bank to act as a runoff filter.
The two projects were selected because both represent the mix of eager partners that came together to get the job done and enlightened willing landowners that have made the county stand out with the most stream buffer projects in the state.
The Fishing Creek restoration on two sections at Camp Andrews is a prime example of how streams in Lancaster County are getting cleaned because of the creativity of project partners.
One section of the stream was on property used by Meadows of Hope, a Camp Andrews ministry for girls age 13-17 who are struggling socially, emotionally or spiritually.
To get around a no-male restriction on the land, female volunteers were recruited by Lydia Martin of the Donegal Chapter of Trout Unlimited, who joined with resident teens to plant 1,500 trees and shrubs along the stream, along with seeds to establish pollinator habitat.
That wasn’t the only challenge encountered. In Lancaster County, old mill dams on streams backed up silt. With the dams removed, streams cut through the sediment, carrying it downstream. This so-called “legacy sediment” is why many streams in the county have steep vertical banks.
On Fishing Creek, heavy equipment removed the legacy sediment that had formed banks 5 to 6 feet high and restored floodplains to catch flood water as the original streams did.
The Indian Spring Run restoration involved an Amish farmer. To improve the water quality, the farmer had to give up cropland on each side of the stream for a protective riparian buffer of vegetation that would trap runoff and provide new wildlife habitat, including wild trout.
“Plain sect farmers tend to want to make sure their farms don’t look unkempt, which can be a challenge on selling them on allowing streamside buffers,” noted Mike Morris, a water program specialist for the state Department of Environmental Protection who has worked on a number of stream restorations in Lancaster County.
“A lot of issues we are seeing are inherited issues from the past — Pappy did it this way, or Grandaddy did it this way,” Morris said while standing along Fishing Creek.
But several Plain sect farmers, seeing the improvements made to their neighbor’s farm along Indian Spring Run, are also wanting the stream on their farms improved.
They are seeing better fishing and more wildlife. Partners on the Indian Spring Run and Fishing Creek projects included Pheasants Forever, whose habitat specialists helped establish food and cover for wildlife, from birds to muskrats.
“What’s good for habitat for pheasants is good for a lot of other species as well,” noted Julia Smith, state coordinator for the nonprofit group in Pennsylvania. “And riparian areas are really important from a habitat connectivity standpoint.”
Through the years, some of the leaders in getting stream projects off the ground include the Donegal Chapter of Trout Unlimited, Lancaster County Conservation District and the Partners for Fish and Wildlife program run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The Donegal Chapter of TU shepherded some of the first projects in the county when it took steps to fence cattle from streams and added improvement structures in Donegal Creek. It has since done extensive projects on Lititz Run, Conowingo Creek, Fishing Creek and assorted other streams.
In the early days, efforts to improve streams in Lancaster County involved mostly fencing cattle away from streams. Now, vegetative buffers that also benefit wildlife, fish structures, removing legacy sediment and re-creating wetlands are typical of stream makeovers.
The Lancaster Clean Water Partners and Chesapeake Conservancy used satellite imagery to come up with a novel approach called “rapid delisting.” High-resolution aerial images were used to identify sections of 21 streams around the county where a concentration of stream buffers and on-the-farm conservation practices can dramatically improve water quality in a relatively short period of time. The goal is to have the stream sections removed from the state’s impaired list by 2030.
And the county’s largest stream restoration to date is underway on the Little Conestoga Creek in suburban Lancaster. The Little Conestoga Creek Blue/Green Corridor Project, which will also include a 2.7-mile streamside public trail, is a model of cooperation. It involves 40 landowners, four municipalities and a kickoff grant of more than $1 million from the Steinman Foundation.
“You can get stuck on statistics,” Smith said. “We’re at a point where we can’t keep up with projects. I know we’re doing good work, and I know it’s made a difference on that farm.”
Added Bob Kutz, who help launch Donegal Trout Unlimited’s first stream restoration project in 1967, “We’ve saved thousands of tons of topsoil and nitrogen and phosphorus going into the Susquehanna and the bay. Absolutely, we’re making a difference.”
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