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 NSSA’s 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 worksite’s 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. Mary’s 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 Men’s 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