The project team visits with landowners at a potential tree planting site. Photo credit: Jessica Louisos
Lewis Creek Association (LCA) and landowners have partnered to plan for improvements to water quality in Lewis Creek. The projects LCA investigated were identified as high priority areas or projects in stream geomorphic assessments and a watershed management plan completed over a decade ago. With funding from Watersheds United Vermont Project Development Block grant from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, LCA was able to prioritize a subset of these projects in 2023. LCA staff then sent letters to landowners, visited properties, and investigated a wide variety of potential projects (from river corridor easements to tree plantings to removing old bridge abutments). LCA has now prepared two high priority projects for the next step (applying for grants that will support further design work or implementation). One of these is a tree and shrub (woody buffer) planting project along the creek in Hinesburg, for which LCA has received funding to complete this fall. The other is a road project in Starksboro, where a gravel road has been eroding, dumping sediment and pollutants into Lewis Creek; if funding is received, it will allow LCA to hire engineers to design fixes for the road.
You can learn more about Lake Champlain’s water quality 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. These include things like slowing water down, spreading it out, and sinking it into the ground (“the three S’s” that are central to LCA’s Ahead of the Storm program. Learn more 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 health and beauty, and to protect the animals and plants that live in our rivers and streams.