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City plans Greenway restoration project



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By: SAM HUDDLESTON, Murfreesboro Environmental Engineer
Posted: Tuesday, November 3, 2009 12:26 pm
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City plans Greenway restoration project | Tornado, Greenway
The Good Friday Tornado that blew through portions of west-northwestern Murfreesboro devastated more than homes, businesses and power lines – a quarter-mile of greenway and six acres of trail property were destroyed as well.

Now Murfreesboro is moving to restore vegetation in the area and Murfreesboro Greenways and Wetlands Program Coordinator Angela Jackson and others are calling for volunteers to help with what she’s calling Planting Day from 9 a.m. to noon Nov. 20 and from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 4 p.m. Nov. 21.

Call Jackson at 893-2141 to volunteer or e-mail her at ajackson@murfreesborotn.gov and bring your shovel and gardening tools.

Trees and streamside vegetation were destroyed along approximately a 3,000-foot section of Stones River’s west fork, 2,800 feet along Sinking Creek, 300 feet of Bushman Creek and over 10 acres of streamside property and vegetation.

Damage to old-growth trees that had survived for decades and perhaps more than a century; hundreds of tress that had provided shade, visual buffer and tree-lined views were down in seconds. Damage to these trees and others, many falling into and over the river and streams along both the western fork of Stones River at Riverview and Sinking Creek at Indian Springs and Northpointe Hall, was particularly extensive.

City of Murfreesboro staff reviewed the extent of the damage to the Greenway and streams in the days following the storm and took action the following week to remove much of the debris from the greenway and streams. 

What they found included damaged and blocked greenway trails, covered drainage pipes and sewer manholes, blocked and clogged streams, and damaged stream banks laying bare for the next rain event to wash away.

City engineers were concerned that the massive amount of storm debris in the City’s waterways could raise flood waters or possibly dislodge and impact one of the downstream bridges.  These concerns were minimized in the days after the tornado as local contractors working with several city departments removed the storm debris from the streams.

Specialized crews more typically found in logging woods were called in to move or “skid” these large trees, some over three feet in diameter, out of the water to areas where other work crews removed trees and limbs to Murfreesboro’s Public Works facility on Florence Road.

The thousands of tons removed in the storm’s wake, many from the stream and greenway segments, according to Murfreesboro’s Solid Waste Director Joey Smith, were ground into a mulch ready to be re-used for ground cover.

Local residents have picked up some of the processed tornado debris and placed it in their yards, flower beds and gardens.

Once the majority of the storm debris was removed from the stream channel, City crews installed erosion control blankets, straw bales and mulched tree debris to protect the bare soils from erosion.  Areas were also seeded to provide more immediate cover. 

Environmental Engineer Sam Huddleston pursued a longer term solution by installing some of the best erosion protection materials available, trees, shrubs, and grasses. 

He and other City staffers brainstormed ideas to help with restoring the area. Residents, concerned about the damage to the streams and about the lost shade and buffer to their homes, were interested to see what plans the city had to help reforest the area.

Now that trees no longer line the banks of Sinking Creek, sunlight is reaching water flowing beneath, environmental engineers say. When sunlight reaches shallow streams like Sinking Creek, water temperatures climb and algae grows, decreasing the oxygen levels. This process makes it difficult for “critters” in the stream to survive.

It’s clearly a concern for Murfreesboro Planner Margaret Ann Ely, who has been working with other City staff and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) representatives to develop a game plan to re-establish vegetation in these sensitive areas. Grant monies acquired by the Rutherford County Soil Conservation District Board may be used to purchase plant materials and nursery stock that will provide new tree cover.

During heavy rainfall, rapidly rising streams erode unprotected stream banks and wash rich soils into our lakes and streams.  The soil clouds the water, covers fish spawning areas and fills our rivers and lakes with sediment.  Conversely, roots of trees and shrubs along the stream bank help hold this soil in place.

Cynthia Holloway, Urban Environmental Director, and her staff have obtained approximately 6,000 small trees to help establish the heavy tree cover along the damaged Greenway trail section.  While these trees cannot immediately replace those trees damaged by the Good Friday tornado, planting this number of small trees will jumpstart the reforestation of the area so that in a few years, the view of the damaged area of the Greenway will be well on its way to recovery.

Robert Haley, Murfreesboro’s Storm Water Coordinator, observed that many damaged stream bank areas are starting to recover on their own. The rich soils, living but damaged trees and numerous seed pods are now exposed to sunlight that before did not reach the ground along the stream banks.  Now, the once obscured areas are receiving a daily dose of sunlight.  The plants are responding by sending up new growth to adsorb the sunlight and add new cover and stabilization to the once tree-covered stream bank.

Angela Jackson, Greenway and Wetlands coordinator with Parks and Recreation, wants to give these stream bank and Greenway areas a boost by organizing a community volunteer event Nov. 20 and 21 to help support the plants in the ground during the prime planting season of late fall. 

Jackson and others turned to native plant materials typically found along Middle Tennessee streams and help the city’s Urban Environmental Department plant 6,000 trees. Non-native have been ignored in favor of any plant that thrives in a river setting. This provides the best chance for survival.

Want to help? Bring your shovel and plan part of your day along the Stones River.

Available time slots are Nov. 20 from 9 a.m. to noon and Nov. 21 from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m.
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Tags: Greenway, Tornado
Member Opinions:
By: ItsGood on 11/3/09
Save the critters

By: GrumpaEd on 11/4/09
Under VP Biden's fuzzy math, will these volunteers be counted as "stimulus saved jobs?"

By: cmac on 11/6/09
"Mother Nature" has been doing "her" thing since time (somewhere between 6000 and 4.5 billion years ago) began. Planet Earth's most recent species (Homo sapiens) has very recently (geologically speaking) gotten in "her" way. That is because we are so prolific. And, we (Homo sapiens) get upset when she knocks down one of our power poles, houses, or trees. The reality is that "she" does not give a d... whether we get in the way or not. One can't help but be impressed by the force of "mother nature".


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