A great idea- Thank you Sally! Get to know your neighborhood creek says the Center for the Inland Bays Near the Headwaters of Love Creek (Photo: Molly Murray/The News Journal ) STORY HIGHLIGHTS The Your Creek initiative will run over several years and will focus on connecting communities to their watershed and creek Education is a big part of the new program, which was featured during a kayak tour of Love Creek As tributaries feeding Rehoboth Bay go, Love Creek is one of the more troubled – a brown, algae-thickened soup of water in summer that is tainted with high nitrogen, elevated bacteria and runoff from the land. But the Center for the Inland Bays wants to change that with a new initiative called Your Creek that engages residents by getting them to focus on their concerns for the area, and develop indicators that can determine when a creek is getting better or if more work is needed. Education is a big part of the new program, which was featured during a kayak tour of Love Creek and one of its small tributaries – Hetty Fisher Glade – last week. The center will eventually expand the initiative to other major tributaries. Residents who live near and along the creeks “can be informed participants” in the issues that impact water quality, said Sally Boswell, who is leading the initiative for the center “So often, it’s too little, too late.” Boswell said the influx of new residents and retirees – many with unique skills and interests – has brought people who often are interested in the environment, but don’t know the area well. “I saw it as an opportunity for engagement,” Boswell said. “We lose things that people don’t even know are there ... You have to know it before you can love it.” Take Steve Britz, a member of the Love Creek Team, who has been going out on the creek this summer to take water quality samples. Britz is a scientist by training and has spent a career working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. His wife is a microbiologist. “She’s interested in bacteria,” Britz said. For Britz, the water sampling has provided a new education in how the creek in his backyard operates. For instance, along Hetty Fisher Glade, he’s measured high nitrogen levels. “It’s obviously picking it up from somewhere,” he said. But at other places on the creek, the levels are not detectable. “I think the marsh works like a filter.” From a launching ramp just off Del. 24, Boswell leads a group of people on a kayak tour of Hetty Fisher Glade and Love Creek. They slip under the bridge and are in another world. Dense trees line the creek edge and there are sedges and other water plants. There are also thick stands of the invasive Phragmites reed. Britz points out the site of a proposed campground on a finger of land that has the glade on one side and the creek on the other. The group paddles farther upstream, where the remnants of old trees catch on the kayak bottoms. They turn around and head back out taking a right back onto Love Creek, past subdivisions with houses tucked back into the trees. There is no other boat traffic. But there are plenty of birds. Great blue herons sweeping from side to side; a pair of green herons along the boggy edge of a dock, and the flute-like trills of a wood thrush from high in the trees. They paddle on and reach a shallow, vegetated area just short of Robinsonville Road. Here, along the edge, is the brilliant red of a patch of blooming cardinal flowers, and a hummingbird seeking the nectar. Submerged aquatic grasses shift just beneath the surface. These are just some of the unexpected discoveries along a creek that few people explore, Boswell said. The Your Creek initiative will run over several years and will focus on connecting communities to their watershed and creek, Boswell said. The plan is to highlight the value of each waterway, identify potential threats and get local residents involved in finding solutions to problems. Love Creek is the first of the major tributaries to be explored. Later this year, the center will expand the program to Vines/Pepper Creek on Indian River Bay, and Dirickson Creek on Little Assawoman Bay. “A lot of people who move here come from places that have a different relationship to their environment,” Boswell said. “A lot of times, they’ve sort of been informed and educated about environmental concerns and impacts and they bring that same environmental consciousness here.” Contact Molly Murray at 463-3334 or mmurray@delawareonline. Follow her on Twitter @MollyMurraytnj. You Can Help If you live near Love Creek, or one of the Love Creek Watershed Tributaries, you can help by clicking on this link and taking the Love Creek Survey: svy.mk/1rI8E64 Or to get more involved or learn more about the Your Creek Initiative contact Sally Boswell at the Center for the Inland Bays at [email protected].
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 16:13:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015