Stream Restoration - Little River (Creamery Brook)
Our 2017 work started in late May as water levels and temperatures were conducive to inspection and in-stream work to commence. The team from the previous year was called back to travel to the various sites completed over the last 11 years and check for Winter ice and Spring freshet damage, if any.
The team had some repairs to digger logs which had undercut, shifted or changed level in the substrate. All in all, the work from the previous years had stood up quite well. Unfortunately, many of the young trees planted along the riverbanks of various sites had been devoured by foraging animals or accidentally mowed by landowners at the start of Spring. It was decided that an area of Creamery Brook (Little River) above the Hwy 289 bridge in Brookfield would be mapped out by NSSAs Adopt-a-Stream personnel to determine the scope of the work and how many structures would be required. This 1.6 km stretch of stream behind the school was a good candidate as it would add to the ongoing restoration of this, the major tributary of the Stewiacke river and historically, the largest producer of Salmon smolts in the Stewiacke watershed. Our two Summer students provided by the Clean NS Foundation, came on at the end of June and after some training jumped in as Team members in early July bringing in-river labour strength to four personnel. The Team leader was a recently certified Stream Restoration Installer with credentials from the NS Environment Dept. He, in fact, provided large logs and tractor work from his own nearby property. This was a boon to our project planning. It was decided that 15 structures would be required, seven of them digger logs with one or more intrinsic deflectors to narrow the channel width, the remaining structures wing deflectors placed at appropriate intervals along the worksites length. No heavy equipment (i.e: excavators) would be required as the whole length of stream had hayfields running along its entirety with an access road entering from Carter Rd. and running straight to the riverbank. The landowner was happy to see us helping to save his land from more bank erosion and had the hay cut along the entire length to give us some great access. Throughout the June to September season the signage erected by us at the road entrance attracted a fair amount of landowners and other citizens of Brookfield who heretofore had no idea what stream restoration was all about. Water testing surveys continued on seven inner Bay of Fundy streams (plus Creamery Brook) using the test equipment supplied by St. Marys U. to add regular data to their CURA H20 database. Team personnel took time out from the river structures to perform this task every one or two weeks depending on the distance of the rivers from Brookfield. After an unusually dry Summer (which facilitated the in-stream placement of structures to proceed more quickly than first envisioned), young willows were planted along both banks of the lower section of stream where bank erosion had been quite evident. Signage was also affixed to trees at selected points along the 1.6 km stretch and extra log and rebar material (plus any litter) gathered up and carted out. A River Walk was conducted on a bright, cool late October morning and in addition to CSA directors seven personnel from the Brookfield Mens Club showed up and, during the tour, provided us with some good contacts and inroads for future work on this stream. The DFO personnel who provide us with the funding through the RFCPP program also came out and spent a morning touring the worksite and photographing the various in-stream structures. They put in writing how impressed they were with our use of the funding they supply. All in all, a successful season. Future work is tentatively scheduled to be performed downstream of the Hwy 289 bridge(or alternatively on Rutherford Brook further up the Stewiacke; a smolt producer historically second only to Creamery Brook) Michael McAdam Project Manager CSA Stream Restoration