We will be working from 9 am – around 1 pm, finishing earlier if we get lots of help. The address is: 12 Huff Lane off Valley Station Road which is off Asbury-West Portal Rd. (county road 643) in Asbury. Bring boots and work gloves and a strong back. See story on this site regarding the project which began earlier this fall.

Cows damage the stream banks by trampling on them as well as by eating all vegetation, allowing silt to run into the stream as well as eliminating shade to keep the river cool. Additionally, this stream tested very high for bovine fecal choliform during water quality tests. West Portal Brook is a native brook and wild brown trout stream that flows into the Musconetcong River.

In the spring of 2012, TU and other volunteers will complete the fencing on the opposite side of the stream and plant one final buffer in two smaller sections of former pasture land.

Downstream pasture now taken out of production to better protect this Musky tributary

Many thanks to this wonderful volunteer crew! This is their second fall out helping with a buffer planting on this very same stream. Last year these folks planted an additional 25 foot buffer to an existing 25 foot buffer on the Beatty Farm just next door along the Musconetcong River and an additional 3 acres in pine on West Portal Brook, also on the adjoining Beatty Farm (BSB Holsteins).

Thanks and hope to see you there!

Photo credit: Bob Karp/Staff Photographer

Daily Record
Thursday, September 15, 2011
By Brian Cowden – Trout Unlimited’s Musconetcong Home Rivers Initiative Coordinator

Last week, I spent an afternoon photographing the Flatbrook River in New Jersey’s northwest corner during a flood event. It was awe-inspiring to watch the river flowing over its banks, its energy dissipating as it entered the forest and meadows that encompassed this usually medium-sized trout stream. The Flatbrook is perhaps the state’s least developed watershed with very few homes or businesses built in its floodplain. Eventually, the river widens out and flows into the Delaware River, but here, just 20 feet wide, the river’s riffles hold trout

Working for Trout Unlimited, I spend a lot of time in and around rivers, watching them. Seeing healthy river systems function helps me in my restoration work in the Musconetcong watershed.

As I watched the river’s increased flow, it was clear that the river’s main energy was focused in the stream channel while the water flooding over the bank was much slower moving, depositing sediment into the flood plain. This deposition of sediment is the reason we see so many farmers planting our food crops along our rivers and streams where the rich soil lends itself to excellent production.

As I watched from the safety of higher ground along the river, I would occasionally see a tree that had toppled off the banks wash downstream. This too is a natural event, and the tree’s branches and trunk create excellent aquatic habitat once it settles to the river bottom or gets hung up along the bank. Soon enough, new trees and shrubs will replace the ones washed off the banks. River and stream channels shift during these floods, new pools are created, riffles and runs move within the stream’s channel, the flora and fauna around the river adapt, and the cycle continues. Flood waters fill vernal pools and lakes and help recharge our groundwater aquifers, the source of drinking water for so many New Jersey residents. All of these things are a completely natural function of any healthy river system.

However, all of that changes when development occurs within the floodplain. Here in the East, especially where early human settlement often built right along river banks to harness a river’s energy, excessive flooding occurs and affects our lives as we have witnessed this summer. Homes, roadways and businesses are all affected when flooding occurs because so much has been built too closely to flowing river waters. And while our economies no longer heavily rely on harnessing energy from rivers, especially here in New Jersey. Our state’s rivers lack significant power to fuel hydro electric power and the need to grind grains or saw logs with water power is long gone, yet we continue to build too closely to streams and rivers. Roads built in our floodplains and bridge abutments too narrow for flood events create additional high waters; obsolete dams stretch across the river, impeding its flows, their usefulness long gone. All of these things can lead to catastrophic flooding events where loss of life and property are at risk as we’ve recently witnessed. Every home, business or road built within a watershed adds impervious surfaces within those watersheds where rain waters can no longer soak in, but instead have to find other places to run off. And because roads and roofs and parking lots are smooth surfaces, that rainwater flows very quickly, unable to be slowed down by native trees, grasses and shrubs as it flows towards stream tributaries which then flow into larger rivers. This increases flood events as well as expands our floodplains ever further into areas where we already live and work.

The solutions to these problems are not always easy. Adequate funding, especially in today’s difficult economic times, is lacking to purchase the more severely affected businesses and homes to have them razed to prevent further not only flooding but the emotional and economic difficulties that these events bring with them.

Often in the wake of widespread flooding like we’ve seen in recent weeks, there is discussion about how to redirect flood waters by building elaborate tunnel systems, raising buildings up and placing them on stilts or high foundations, or the need to buy out the more severely affected structures so that they can be razed to prevent future pain and suffering from those that live and work in these areas.

There are no simple answers. These are the places where we have chosen to spend our lives. Yet there are important lessons to learn and there are things we can do to reduce, if not prevent, future flooding. Improvements can be made to storm water drainage systems. Obsolete dams that back up our rivers in floods can be removed. Native vegetation can be planted along stream banks to reduce flow velocities when a stream or river overflows. And we can eliminate building within our floodplains.

Rivers are truly awesome features of our natural world, but they demand our proper respect. They supply our drinking water, the very essence of life. But they can also bring much pain and suffering as we have seen when we don’t give them the room they sometimes need to manage naturally.

The colors will be terrific and there will be plenty of fall stocked fish as well as wild and holdovers waiting for your skills after noon.

Upper Wood Timber Crib dam dated to the late 1800s

The Musky recently saw three (3) remnant dams removed on the lower river between the Finesville dam and the Delaware River. This project was spearheaded by our partners at the Musconetcong Watershed Association who received grants for approximately $55,000 for the removal work. TU contributed an additional $10, 700 to date to restore two badly eroded banks on properties adjacent to the upper dam to ensure the project could move forward. These landowners initially opposed this project sighting their fears of additional erosion if the dams were removed and only by TU stepping in to ensure them that we would use heavy equipment to repair their banks and plant them in the fall of 2011 avoided the need for a lengthy open public meetings requirement and the loss of at least one more year. We continue to search for minimal funding needed to plant the banks of these two properties in October or November.

Restoring a badly eroded bank above the stone dam

The dams, one dating to 1790 which was made entirely of stone and the others being wooden coffer dams dating to 1850 and 1890 respectively, once fueled grist, saw and paper mills close to the confluence with the Delaware River. All three dams were considered “low flow impediments to anadromous fish passage” and that is why they were targeted for removal. By doing so, we have improved the score for future dam removal funding from the federal agencies and helped restore species that haven’t been above these structures like American shad, striped bass and river herring in well over 100 years. Permits are expected to arrive for the removal of the Finesville dam which may take place this year if water levels cooperate. That is the first major dam upstream of the Delaware. TU has also hired Princeton Hydro to begin feasibility studies to remove the Hughesville paper mill dam, which is dam # 2 upstream of the Delaware. Our Musconetcong River Restoration Partnership will be meeting this fall to engage the owners of the Warren Glen and Hughesville dams to consider allowing us to fully remove those dams beyond the feasibility study at Hughesville. A recent engineering report required by DEP Dam Safety & Flood Control regarding the condition of the Warren Glen dam, the 3rd dam upstream of the Delaware and the state’s largest, has proven that this structure is in need of significant rehabilitation or removal. This dam backs up about half of the famed Musky Gorge and is half owned by the NJ Division of Fish & Wildlife.

Restored channel