Delaplane Project Will Help River, Bay

By Bill Walsh

Times-Democrat Staff Writer

Despite the fact that the federal government now routinely talks in terms of billions — can trillions be far behind? — those administering conservation programs balked at a stream restoration project on his Delaplane farm, Dennis Liberson said.

The prospect of spending about $2 million on a project on private property apparently gave them pause.

Even the employees of The Nature Conservancy who administer the Virginia Aquatic Resources Trust Fund found themselves taking a big gulp before deciding to pony up a major portion of the tab to restore Liberson's portion of Bolling Branch, a tributary of Goose Creek.

Is it worth it? Liberson thinks so, and The Nature Conservancy apparently agrees.

A compromised Bolling Branch and four small tributaries on the approximately 120-acre Delaplane land he bought in 2006 contribute 1,000 tons of downstream sediment every year, Liberson said of the engineering calculations that support the project. And sedimentation is the single largest pollutant in the Potomac River into which Goose Creek empties, and in the Chesapeake Bay, into which the Potomac flows.

Additionally, the restoration effort will increase the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water, newly planted bankside trees will push the water's rising temperature down, and the stream will become more efficient at removing nitrates and phosphates.

At the suggestion of a California friend who is active in the Coral Reef Alliance (Liberson, an underwater photographer of considerable renown, is on the board of the environmental group), the retired human resources executive began considering a riparian restoration, and contacted Williamsburg Environmental Group to investigate its feasibility.

"They basically started educating me about what was wrong with the creek," Liberson said.

To the untrained eye, that part of Bolling Branch which bisects his property would seem to be little affected by the hand of man.

But more knowledgeable eyes see beyond the surface.

"They showed me where the creek was out of alignment," Liberson said, "where it had probably been moved by people over time."

The land was once all forested, but when former owners removed the trees, probably in the early 1890s, the creek was free to wander as it would.

Over time, the root systems of remaining trees were compromised by erosion, the stream grew deeper, faster and more twisted, essentially, Libeson explains, "cutting itself off from its surrounding floodplain."

When the project is finished, probably in late May, Liberson will have restored a total of about 8,000 feet of Bolling Branch, put in about five acres of new wetlands and restored several other acres of that important eco-system that were existent, but weakening.

There are many good environmental funds administered by state and the fedcral government, Liberson noted, "but they would not suffice for a project of this size."

The Virginia Aquatic Resources Trust Fund, co-administered by The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, "wanted a project in the Goose Creek watershed, which is one of their priority sites," Liberson said.

The trust fund gets its money from developers who damage or destroy wetlands or other aquatic sites. They can create their own replacement sites or, as they do more often, pay into a mitigation fund, such as the Virginia Aquatic Resources Trust Fund.

Generally speaking, developers are impacting very small areas. The Trust consolidates money from many small projects and pools the resources to accomplish larger projects that have a greater chance of ecological success.

"The Trust Fund helps make large-scale conservation possible," its Web site says. "The program is able to implement large-scale watershed efforts that restore, enhance, and protect water quality through cost-effective, ecologically preferable projects. "

The Corps of Engineers 'doesn't like to do fragmented mitigation sites," Liberson said, "and it's hard to find a big enough site to make it environmentally worthwhile, in terms of mitigation."

His site fit the bill. There is, he said, "a lot of creek on a relatively small piece of property."