Wetlands efforts expanding in Washington County
This is a map of the environmental project area in Avella. The red serpentine lines are restored creeks, enhanced with more curves to prevent erosion. The orange overlay areas are wetland expansion areas.
Conor Gillespie looks for ephemeroptera, plecoptera and trichoptera in the stream that runs through the expanded area of wetlands along Buxton Road in Avella.
Flowers and other vegetation cover the hillsides in the wetland along Buxton Road in Avella.
Flowers and other vegetation cover the hillsides in the wetland along Buxton Road.
Conor Gillespie finds a mayfly in the stream that runs through the wetland along Buxton Road in Avella.
Conor Gillespie, Northeast operational manager with Resource Environmental Solutions LLC, walks through the expanded area of the wetland along Buxton Road in Avella on Tuesday.
Conor Gillespie, Northeast operational manager with Resource Environmental Solutions LLC, walks through the expanded area of the wetland along Buxton Road in Avella on Tuesday.
AVELLA – Ribbitting frogs and the crunch of coconut rope underfoot were signs efforts to expand wetlands around Avella Area School District were going well.
Two efforts to reclaim and expand wetlands have been going on in Washington County, one being Resource Environmental Solutions reclaiming five acres of wetlands next to the school district’s property on Buxton Road as part of impact mitigation offsets contracted through Shell for its looming cracker plant in Beaver County.
“This was an ideal mitigation project to offset impacts at the Monaca cracker site. It has great stream length,” said Shell site manager Jim Sewell of the 60-acre area with three streams that feed Cross Creek Lake.
The coconut rope holding the banks and reshaping the streams to be more serpentine are all part of erosion-control efforts, according to RES Northeast region manager Conor Gillespie.
“This is built out to hold up to a 100-year storm event,” Gillespie said, “and pre-restoration, there were virtually no fish, no water movement. … We have biological performance standards to meet as part of our contract to maintain this for the next half-decade, and we’re already meeting them. The site is already better than its original state.”
The project, which was permitted in June 2015, aims to increase biodiversity through planting lots of trees, flowers and grass. RES aims to finish the project within two months. The site is being placed under a permanent protected conversation district, according to Gillespie.
“We’ve planted 550 saplings or seeds per acre,” Gillespie said as he toured an overlook with dozens of felled black walnut trees.
“Those dead trees are a symptom of how bad this area was. They were suspended in the air out of the soil,” Gillespie said.
The planting of sumac, red oak, black willow and cratageus – typically dry-region hawthorn trees – are all growing well.
“The hawthorns we planted, we expected them to fall and be large snags for birds to perch on. But amazingly, they’re rooting and growing,” Gillespie said.
In Starpointe, the Washington County Council of Economic Development is overseeing two acres of wetlands restructuring, offsetting impacts from the expanding business park. The $12 million public-private partnership for phase one is part of a stormwater management effort and a move of wetlands to more viable locations, according to council executive director Dan Reitz.
“The group Ecological Restoration is installing rain gardens as part of the stormwater efforts, and we’re fundraising for the next phase,” Reitz said. RES officials said the contract with Shell was confidential, and Department of Environmental Protection spokesman John Poister said such details weren’t required with the remediation permit.
Though the survival of animal species isn’t an overt goal for the Starpointe project, it is for the Buxton Road site.
“We’re doing a total system reset,” Gillespie said. “The diversity of plants is already significantly better. This area had less than an acre of wetlands. … We concentrate on building out the plant life to support animal life. If you build it, they will come.”