A tall eroding bank along McCabe’s Brook, just downstream of the Route 7 bridge in Shelburne. Photo credit: Jessica Louisos
McCabe’s Brook has poor water quality. The brook originates near the Charlotte Central School, passes through Charlotte and east of Earthkeep Farmcommon. It is visible as it passes under Route 7 in Shelburne near the Vermont Day School/Teddy Bear Company, then runs west of the School St. neighborhood and passes under Harbor Road between Davis Park and the Arbors. From there, the wastewater treatment facility drains into it, and it parallels the Ti Haul Path before draining into the LaPlatte River just upstream from its mouth in Shelburne Bay. Runoff, stormwater discharges and stream erosion near the Shelburne Village, combined with upstream agricultural runoff and stream erosion, has led to phosphorus (a nutrient) levels in McCabe’s Brook that exceed the state criterion. The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation and US Environmental Protection Agency have deemed McCabe’s Brook as “impaired” in its downstream stretches by excess nutrients, as it does not adequately support aquatic life (fish and invertebrates).
To help address this problem, Lewis Creek Association (LCA) received a grant to develop a prioritized list of projects to help reduce nutrient levels in the brook, and to develop concept designs for three of these projects. LCA hired engineering firm SLR, and collaborated with the towns of Shelburne and Charlotte, the Vermont Department of Conservation, as well as private landowners, to develop and prioritize the list of projects after the engineers made site visits. The total list of over 30 projects included everything from floodplain restoration and tree plantings, to bio-retention areas (rain gardens), to dam removal, to swirl separators (which remove sediment and some phosphorus from water before it leaves the separator). The project team ultimately chose three projects to have the engineers progress to 30% design. One project is a swirl separator at the outlet of a storm drain in the School St. neighborhood. The second is a swirl separator along Harbor Road in Shelburne, which would remove sediment and pollutants collected over a large portion of the Shelburne Village. The third is a series of settling basins and filter berms that would allow water to slow down and drop sediment along Depot Rd. in Shelburne where there has been significant erosion and road washouts. Each of these treatments remove sediment from water before it reaches McCabe’s Brook.
These solutions will help with the 3 S's that are central to LCA’s Ahead of the Storm program: slow it down, soak it in to the ground, and spread it out. You can learn more about the problem and what landowners can do to improve water quality in a brief 17-minute presentation LCA’s website at bit.ly/lca-wq-videos and about the Ahead of the Storm program at bit.ly/lca-aots. It is crucial that we all do our part to improve to water quality in small ways, in order to improve Lake Champlain’s water quality and beauty, and to protect the animals and plants that live in our rivers and streams. LCA hopes to help move some of these projects forward in the coming years, to improve water quality and habitat in McCabe’s Brook.
This project has been funded by an agreement awarded by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission to NEIWPCC in partnership with the Lake Champlain Basin Program.