Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
March 16, 2006 issue
What’s Going Into Kraut Creek?
Three ASU Professors Install Gauges To Monitor Flow, Chemicals, StormwaterImpact
Story by Sally Treadwell
Kraut Creek flows through the heart of Boone—behind Howard Street, through the ASU campus and eventually out into the New River. Although it’s a designated trout stream, most of it looks more like a drainage ditch, tunneling under parking lots with none of the meanders natural to creeks and rivers. About 70 outflow pipes dump stormwater—and who knows what else—into Kraut Creek, while trash litters stretches of its heavily eroded banks.
Although the Kraut Creek Enhancement Project Committee is in the process of evaluating the possibilities, design options and cost of a stream bank restoration project, any restoration must be based on accurate knowledge of the quantities of water and contaminants that flow through the stream. To provide this knowledge, Dr. William Anderson (hydrogeology), Dr. Christopher Thaxton (physics) and Dr. Carol Babyak (chemistry) have installed a stream gauge near the water tower and a “grab” sampler upstream at the Jimmy Smith Park as part of a long-term monitoring project. “We need to establish a baseline before anything is done. Then we’ll be able to monitor improvement as any restoration progresses,” said Babyak.
Nancy Reigel, the ad hoc chair of the restoration committee, is pleased about the installation of the gauges. “Having them start monitoring the creek now is really excellent,” she said. “It will help us to see what can be done realistically.”
“We need to know how the creek responds to rainfall. When rainwater washes off heavily salted roads and parking lots during the winter, does it make the creek hyper-saline? Does stormwater raise the creek’s temperature? What’s the volume and flow rate of water?” asked Anderson.
“Gasoline, oils, salt, trace metals, dust, pesticides and fertilizers all impact the stream,” said Thaxton. “We’ll look at all those things, along with the dissolved oxygen content, conductivity and the pH balance.”
Sampling is especially important during storms, Thaxton said. “That’s when most of this stuff washes into the creek.”
Sediment is not a big issue right now, he added, but it will be important to measure it while the Broome-Kirk gymnasium is being torn down and Howard Street is renovated. “No matter how hard you try to prevent it, sediment always washes off the site,” said Thaxton. “This gives us a chance to evaluate control measures. All this data will help us to spell out what we’re doing right and what could be done better.”
Eventually real-time displays of chemical and flow data will be available online and at the McKinney Geology Museum. Graduate student Jason Davis is setting up a wireless link to receive live-feed data from the gauges, so the creek can be monitored from across Rivers Street in the CAP (Chemisty, Astronomy and Physics) Building.
The three professors view the restoration of the Rocky Branch creek in Raleigh as a perfect model. It’s a creek that runs through the North Carolina State University campus for more than a mile and faced similar challenges of urban waste pollution, banks eroded by stormwater and virtually no riparian buffer or aquatic life. The restoration was planned in three phases and won a Sir Walter Raleigh Award for community appearance in 2005.
According to Babyak, the group has been planning this monitoring project for quite awhile. “It will be interesting to see what we find out,” she said.
“This is a unique opportunity, here and now, to make an impact on a national scale,” Thaxton stressed. “How do you do streams properly in an urban setting? It will take money, effort and cooperation. All interested parties, including landowners, must have a common mission statement, but we could end up with a stream that will significantly contribute to the beauty of our town and the quality of our water.”