Creek and its People

There’s an old creek by my home (Wilson Creek) it wanders its way through the lower parts of my neighborhood after beginning in my backyard. There is one part of this creek that seems particularly special, the tiny overpass through the creek acts as a point where two things meet. Where nature and people come together, all in one brief moment one can become engulfed in the majesty of the place. Feeling enclosed as the tree’s cover one side of the creek bed as though fingers curling up from underneath it. Then you notice the water, scarcely deep enough to get your feet wet in most places, it doesn’t rumble of thunder or moan. Instead it trickles quaintly as the water skids its way through the tunnel just beneath the road. If you look carefully, really carefully you can watch the bits of dirt and rock get picked up where the water is the fastest. This new sediment then gets deposited as soon as they were elevated when the stream slowed once again.

My Grandma Dorothy Lewis.

The neighborhood around my home is aging; not just the homes but the people. My grandfather once worked this land when it was a farm as a teenager in the early thirties.  Soon afterwards he purchased a plot of land and began to build his home. A home he crafted after his return from military service in WWII. He lived there until his passing in 2003. His neighbor and longtime local resident Laverne Edwards has lived in her home since April of 1951. I asked her what she remembered about the area at the time. “I remember there weren’t that many people living here back then. We (she and her husband) paid $450 dollars for this lot when we bought it. There was a sign at the end of the road that read ‘Warning children at play 15mph’ and I tell you if you’d hit one of the sinkholes in the road then going anything more than 5 you’d bust your tire.” Knowing that the “overpass” had existed in some form or another since before my grandma was there as a kid I can only imagine the level ill repair it must have been in if the roads were in that state.

 I then asked Laverne about a time she could remember when the local creek made a substantial impact on the local residents. To which she explained to me that at some point the state came in and built the overpass up from what it was to what I remember it as, two large concrete tunnels for water to pass through with a road above. During this construction event all homes further up the road from the creek were inaccessible (our “neighborhood” is one mile long road with homes on each side) Laverne opened up her yard which connected to a nearby road so that everyone could get to their homes because “It seemed to be the neighborly thing to do”.

Rail road tie retaining wall built by Mr.Boyd in 1977 the home in
background is his.

Another longtime local resident Mr.Boyd has lived in his home which is next to the overpass since 1968. I asked him about the state of the overpass when he moved in only to learn that at some point between his arrival and 1977 some significant reconstruction had been done to it. This may be the event Laverne mentioned earlier. As I spoke to him about the creek I learned that he had built a retaining wall using left over rail road ties from his job at the railroad to protect his home from flooding in 1977, which was after the overpass as I had known it was built. I asked about the water level of the creek since he had been there and got an answer that I wasn’t expecting. “In 1977 the creek would hardly flow at all. Great parts of it went most of the year dry. I had a guy come out with a backhoe that year and cut it out a bit to get all of the water flowing again.” What, I wonder would’ve caused such a substantial difference in the water depth of the creek from the forties when it was waist deep to seventy-seven when there was hardly any standing water at all? Could it be that the creation of the overpass at which I became familiar with the creek was the principal cause of its destruction?

                I have learned that the memory I have of Wilson Creek, as a childhood place all to my own. is hardly accurate, indeed it was in many ways it was quite backwards. The creek had been in constant flux by those who came before me whether the fluctuations benefitted the creek or decremented it. A simple curiosity led me to wonder what existence was like elsewhere on the creek. So I hit the books, until I discovered that the creek had been modified heavily since its discovery by the Europeans; Irrigation took its toll on the creek I had grown so fond of. While the creek around me looks relatively pristine.  With flora, fauna and life in abundance; the areas elsewhere were not so lucky. Man took from nature its beauty for its own design. Draining the life from the watery passage ways into their fields for their crops to grow from whence they wouldn’t. For hundreds of years it had happened. Since the 1700’s when the land was but scratched and not yet scared.  I feel as though torn. On the one hand I wish immensely to reach out and protect the land and the mass of beauty that it can entail in its natural state at all costs. On the other I realize that those who cause the destruction I can relate to. They aren’t vengeful to a creek that has wrong them. They are people whose happiness I hold to be self-evident. Any destruction they have caused the creek has been born of ignorance not malice.

Much to my delight I learned that there are some people coming together in large numbers to fix the errs of those before us. Bernheim forestry and Kentucky universities have come together in an effort to fix all of the problems that man has wrought to the creek. Not only did they replant the areas around it with local growth. They rebuilt the stream in its entirety. Senior Vice President of UofL’s research put it as follows “what’s unique about the Wilson Creek project… is its comprehensiveness. Streams have been modified or enhanced before, but not fully restored.”  The creek of my childhood gets the tender love and care of its caretakers once more. After all of the hits the creek has taken it’s a miracle I suppose that the creek itself is restorable at all. It had in parts eroded uncontrollably going straight down to the bedrock acting more like an axe cleaving away the sediment, rather than its normal sandpaper like movement of the creek sediment below.

How magnificent it was to know that some other soul caught the idea of understanding such a place as I did. Many people with many titles trooped across my creek, engineers, biologist, arbitrators. All for the goal of cleaning up the mistakes of the other men with different titles that came before them. This group had an ambition that set them apart from others. They sought completeness. As Kevin Rayburn writer for the University of Louisville Impact journal puts it this way, “The restoration of Wilson Creek ….  Is being hailed as an unprecedented opportunity for engineers, biologists, arborists and landowners to see what happens when a stream is rebuilt virtually from scratch.” Not only are we inviting nature to scab itself over our mistakes (revegetation) we are cleaning the wound, replicating it, so that it doesn’t have to do its job twice. Allowing the creek to snake and wind so that erosion remains local and the debris comes as though brushed sandpaper and not cleaved.  Letting the ground itself be the filter and reservoir. Allowing the area around it to swell with the seasons to create water pristine and bristling with life.

This still takes me back to home. As I sat at the creek I had known all of my life I assumed that it was here as it always was and as it always should be. I’ve since learned that neither of those statements is true. It has been changed significantly since its inception. And a lot of work would need to be done to it to get it to the state at which it should be. I feel as though this shouldn’t be an impossible goal to obtain. I refuse to think that by asking for a little tender love and care for our environment I also claim it inherently superior to our happiness as people.  I think it still possible to coexist with our environment. Perhaps, if we sit down, reanalyze the impact of our actions and talk to our peers, neighbors and the learned this goal can be met. And so we shall sit with open ears and open eyes listening to each other and finding this goal realizing that they can be meet if, and only if we are willing to cooperate.

And as such…

We certainly know that neglect of local Creek Systems is a world-wide problem and a principal cause of environmental decay.  For generations we have changed local ecosystems to suit our own individual and collective needs. And now it’s finally starting to make a significant impact in how we see the world and how the world treats us.  The problem of creek neglect is one that has to be solved locally. For it takes a reteaching, a  showing if you will to those that are unaware that the way they are acting towards the sensitive areas around them is not the correct one.

                The solution to this is a volunteer group who has oversight from professional s in hydrology(UofL Stream Institute for example). It has been predicted that streams impacted by Urban Stream Syndrome have a substantially more erosion and less biodiversity than those that do not. Furthermore it has been shown that this cause of stream decay is second only to the agriculture industry.

                Calling on this, I say that a community action group ought to be put together to protect this creek properly. For if we cast a blind eye, if we ignore this, the world as we know it will not be. No longer will kids be able to hunt for crayfish in the streambeds for the crayfish cannot live there. No longer can one sit and listen to the gentle flow of water because it would be a torrent of water cutting through the streambed the bedrock.

                The naysayers will say “Community action never works” and “We need a government initiative to get serious about this” I disagree, and I call to your attention the irrevocable success of the “Appalachian Trail Conservancy” an entirely non-profit community led initiative to maintain the natural environment. One that has for generations kept the Appalachian trail, that is some 2100 miles long just as majestic  as the day it was dreamed of.

                As such I find this Kentucky Creek Preservation Collection absolutely necessary, not only to protect the life that has existed since time immemorial but also to protect the cultural legacy and gift of streams to our children, and our children’s children.

Boyd, Calvin. Personal interview. 3 Jul. 2011.

Edwards, Laverne. Personal interview. 5 Jul. 2011.

Lewis, Dorothy. Personal interview. 7 Jul. 2011.

“Urban Stream Syndrome: The Future of Stream Ecosystems in Urban Watersheds” sigimax.org n.d web.

 7 Jul. 2011 

Appalachian Trail. Appalachian Trail Conservancy n.d. Web.8 Jul. 2011

Bernheim Arbourem and Research Forest  Bernheim Arbourem and Research Forest, n.d. Sun. 19 Jun          

  2011

Wilson creek, like all streams, serves as a filter and regulator for the water coming through it and allows the water to go into the surrounding area slowly and more pure as opposed to an onslaught of liquid attacking it at once.  The path of Wilson Creek remains similar to what it was 400 years ago before the onset of European settlers and the irrigation that followed. In 2003 the Bernheim Forest and the Universities of Louisville and Kentucky successfully petitioned for an Environmental Protection Agency grant. Much survey was done as to determine the original route of the creek before the European settlers arrived. From the data found researchers decided were best to place the routes so as to work with the already standing environment, not work against it. Biologist were called in to ensure that all life (fish, microorganisms and otherwise) were all around and in proper numbers. It does however become clear that to Bernheim  it is important that “Wilson Creek is a stream with very good water quality….. This project helps ensure the stream’s future ability to purify water and maintain good habitat”.  Ensuring that the end goal will and ought to remain a healthy environment and a sustainable environment for wildlife and people. As such Wilson Creek is being used as a workshop to teach locals about the importance of environmental protection and what homeowners on the property can do to properly care for the watershed around them.

“Snaking and Winding Again” Louisville.edu. University of Louisville. n.d. Web. Jun. 19 2011

Since the late 1700’s people have been altering Wilson Creek and its immediate vicinity. Sometimes simply diverting a bid of the creeks water flow into nearby crop fields other times far more extreme plowing straight through the area taking whatever trees and life that went with it. The  Environmental Protection Agency gave 500,000 dollars to the cause. What is so impressive is the fact that “The restoration of Wilson Creek in rural ….  Is being hailed as an unprecedented opportunity for engineers, biologists, arborists and landowners to see what happens when a stream is rebuilt virtually from scratch.” The magnitude of this work is being embraced by Art Parola the civil engineer in charge. The man who convinced Bernheim to take the extra effort to complete revamp the creek as opposed to repeating the normal vegetation and done policy. Explaining that the creek was incorrect and at a systemic level. After five years of preemptive research they finally decided to operate on the creek in its fullest. Even if for quite some time the renovation area looked more like a destruction site than it did a bed of creation. The local flora and fauna will take some years to completely regrow. Thus is the need for periodic checks.