Stream Restoration in Beaver Lake Watershed Helps Water Quality

Beaver Watershed Alliance recently partnered with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Natural State Streams to remove a failed slab crossing and repair bank stability in Mill Creek, a tributary of the White River. Restorations to the stream will help protect water quality in the watershed and improve habitat quality for wildlife in and around the stream.

The Article below was originally in Beaver Watershed Alliance’s July E-News.

Mill Creek Restoration

By Melissa McCarver, Beaver Watershed Alliance

An exciting project that just wrapped up this June in the Headwaters of the White River along Mill Creek was a failed low water crossing removal and stream restoration project. Everyone uses low water crossings here in the Ozarks to get to their hard-to-reach fields, but it is a good idea to make sure they are functioning properly. Low water crossing that block fish passage or cause changes in water flow are very detrimental to stream health and water quality.

The owner of the property along Mill Creek contacted the Alliance about this crossing over a year ago. The crossing was broken in the middle, so the water was moving through about a four foot opening where the crossing had collapsed. The water was moving so fast through this opening it was channelizing the creek, and it was causing a head cut to form, which would have continued to move upstream if left alone. Not only was the creek channelizing and a head cut forming due to the low water crossing, but the water was eroding a bank downstream due to its high velocity. Be aware of how your low water crossing is affecting your creek upstream and downstream!

The Alliance partnered with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to help fund this project, and Natural State Streams, a streambank restoration contractor, was used to remove the crossing and stabilize the creek. The project only took a little over the week once the construction started, and now the landowner has a stable crossing and a beautiful creek. The project stabilized 100 linear feet of the streambank and channel.

We would love to work with more landowners on projects like these. These are not quick projects though! If you have an issue on your stream, please contact us before it gets worse.