The completion of a project on Cole Avenue in the West End of Staunton will improve water quality for residents and reduce flooding risk in the area.
However, the Cole Avenue Stream Channel Restoration, which began a year ago, also enables the city to meet state mandates for stormwater pollution reduction according to the Chesapeake Bay Act.
“We’re really excited this project wrapped up. It’s going to help us meet those state mandates which was of such importance but I think it’s going to have a local benefit as well,” said Staunton Environmental Programs Administrator Willow Hughes.
The 1,100 foot stream had experienced so much erosion that the channel bank was 8′ high in some spots. A grate in one area of the storm also created flooding concerns because debris would collect and prevent water from flowing into the grate. The city’s reconstruction of the grate will now prevent debris buildup.
“Now that [the project] is finished, we feel like flooding will happen less frequently. It will take a much, much larger storm to have flooding issues there,” Hughes said of the grate.
According to Hughes, the stream channel does not usually flow with water except when stormwater runoff from land above flows into Cole Avenue’s stream. The city corrected the channel bank with stone and new vegetation to prevent erosion and connected the stream to the flood plain.
State funding through a grant covered 45 percent of the total $1.4 million cost of the project, and city funds covered the rest.
“Because projects like these are definitely a priority here in the city,” Hughes said.
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Important because, while Staunton is 158 miles from the Chesapeake Bay, nutrient pollution from bodies of water in the Queen City can end up in the Bay. According to Hughes, all streams in Staunton drain to Augusta County and the Middle River, which then flows into the North River, then the South Fork of the Shenandoah which ends up in the Shenandoah River before flowing north to the Potomac River. Finally, the Potomac flows into the Chesapeake Bay.
“So, we are distanced quite a bit, but what happens here does go into the Bay because we are in the Bay‘s watershed,” Hughes said. “And a large problem the Bay has been facing in many years is nutrient pollution.”
As part of the Bay watershed in Virginia, Staunton residents have a responsibility to prevent nutrient pollution into bodies of water. Hughes said that plants need phosphorus and nitrogen, which are both in soil. When soil ends up in streams from stormwater runoff, algae blooms can form when too much nutrients are in the Bay and they block sunlight from penetrating. Decomposers break up the algae and uses up too much oxygen so fish cannot live in what becomes a dead zone. Federal legislation limits nutrient pollution from entering the Bay to prevent dead zones.
By shoring up the channel bank on Cole Avenue with stone and new vegetation, the city has helped to prevent more erosion of soil into waterways. The project has made it possible to annually remove 113 pounds of phosphorus, 653 pounds of nitrogen and 451,000 pounds of suspended solids from the water system. The reductions will allow Staunton to meet requirements of the Chesapeake Bay Act by 2028 with approximately 15 percent of total nitrogen load reduction and more than 20 percent of total phosphorus load reduction.
The Cole Avenue stream drains approximately 275 acres of land, but 29 percent of the land is impervious surface, including roads and rooftops that cannot absorb stormwater. More than 2 million gallons of stormwater runoff flow into the channel for every inch of rain.
“When it does rain, there is a lot of water that gets sent to this channel and that water is moving really, really fast so it had cut this channel to be really deep because [the water] had eroded the sides so much,” Hughes said.
The project also helped the city’s flood management by reestablishing functionality of the floodplain by slowing the flow of water and reducing downstream flooding impacts.
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Rebecca Barnabi
