Town Creek Watershed Assessment
Town Creek below Little Valley Creek with excess sediment deposited. 4/10.24.
DWR asked that we look at watershed conditions that might increase flood flows, decrease bases flows, and increase sediment yield, so we studied scientific reports, used powerful spatial data, collected field data and interviewed long time residents and crafted the Town Creek Watershed Assessment. Discover how land management has altered the watershed causing cumulative effects, but learn also about signs of recovery in some sub-basins.
Monitoring
Imil Ferrara at the start of the Airport Road to Grist Creek riparian survey. 5/15/24.
Monitoring was carried out as part of this project, including in cooperation with Round Valley Elementary School and Round Valley High School students. To find out about all aspects of project monitoring, see the Final Town Creek Monitoring and Maintenance Plan. Students studied the stream bed substrate size and riparian conditions at the Town Creek restoration site, including collecting baseline data on cottonwood trees that were deep planted in March 2023. For a full report on riparian conditions and D50 at the restoration site, see this report.
As part of our Classrooms Without Walls approach, we took students to measure water temperatures and study stream insects at North Fork and Middle Fork Eel River site on or near the RVIT Reservation. Learn more about findings in the NF/MF 2023 Temperature Monitoring Report. Data were also collected in the Town Creek watershed on soil compaction, and results can be found in the Town Creek Watershed Assessment. The Round Valley County Water District needed data on problems related to restricted channel width in the Town Creek reach above and below Highway 162. These data are reported in the Town Creek Riparian Width Survey: Airport Road to Grist Creek.
Education
Mr. Campos’ 7th Grade Summer School class headed for the mouth of Williams Creek.
The Town Creek Restoration and Education Project was a wonderful opportunity for us to work with RVES and RVHS teachers for three years. We monitored Town Creek and waters of the RVIT Reservation, planted willows and cottonwoods, and took field trips to inspiring locations to learn about forest and grassland health. We did art projects, including two Earth Day Student Art Shows at the Covelo Library Commons and invited the community in to celebrate. Early in the project, when the Covid 19 pandemic was still active, we supplied curriculum materials to teachers electronically. The students were also involved in Town Creek and Covelo clean up projects in 2023 and 2024, as try to break the cycle of public dumping of trash. Read a summary of the project we did for Forest and River News. In 2024, we arranged for natural resource professionals to do Zoom presentations to RVHS class rooms to try to encourage them to choose natural resource career paths.
Click on images to see Facebook posts about our education events with Round Valley Elementary and Round Valley High School students.
Outreach
Round Valley Education Committee attendees at Covelo Library Commons. 1/21/24.
Outreach was a major part of the project as we engaged the community with our philosophy of: “Engage, Enlighten and Empower”. A major form of networking was participating in RVCWD meetings to keep them updated and to seek their guidance on project elements. We used our website and Facebook to effectively engage the Round Valley community, where there is no local newspaper. We used the popular local public radio station KYBU to reach out to listeners through the Eel River Recovery Project Weekly Update on Monday mornings, and the Harmony Half Hour weekly at 7:30 PM Thursdays and posted to our SoundCloud page. We made posters and educational handouts for community events, like the Blackberry Festival, Earth Day and Covelo History Day. See the posters: Town Creek Project Summary, Forest Health Careers, and Willow Planting. In October 2023, hosted a community stream clean-up and picked up more than two tons of trash from Town Creek and Mill Creek tributaries. ERRP has a long standing Round Valley Education Committee and they were informed about the progress of the Town Creek project and offered suggestions on how to deal with problems like public dumping. Read the RVEC 1/21/24 Minutes for more information. A presentation was made to the Round Valley Area Municipal Advisory Committee in February 2024 to inform them of long-term plans for restoration of Town Creek and its watershed. A video was created to document the success of the project and to convey information about the Town Creek watershed, including problems and opportunities related to watershed management. Watch the Video!