Group seeks a return to natural waterways
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| Shawn Clubb photo/ Danelle Haake uses a Stream Team kit to take water samples along Deer Creek near Laclede Station Road. Haake is part of a coalition seeking to guide the future of the River Des Peres and its tributaries. |
sclubb@yourjournal.com
Danelle Haake bent down along a stretch of Deer Creek to take a sample of water for analysis.The creek, a tributary of the River Des Peres, is bordered by mud banks to one side and a gradually rising mix of mud and limestone on the other. The creek corridor that features trees, plants, rocks, ducks and kingfishers could distract visitor's from its urban surroundings. The creek has Deer Creek Park on one side, homes on the other and Laclede Station Road a mere 100 yards downstream. Other clues to the creek's urban setting include pieces of brick, white plastic grocery bags and a rusted, metal frame structure half the size of a man.
"That wasn't there the last time I was down here," said Haake of the structure.
As interim chairman of the River Des Peres Watershed Coalition, Haake is concerned about the futures of the River Des Peres and tributaries that include Deer Creek, Gravois Creek, Black Creek and Engelholm Creek. She hopes the group can generate a public dialogue on them.
"This is an asset to our community that many people have neglected and allowed to become less than it could be, less than it should be," Haake said. "We want to return these assets to something we could value and we could showcase."
The coalition will hold a public planning forum at 6 p.m. Feb. 26 at the Heman Park Community Center, 975 Pennsylvania Ave., University City. The River Des Peres watershed includes much of the area of St. Louis city, University City, Clayton, Richmond Heights, Webster Groves, Ladue and 37 other municipalities.
While the coalition engages in river cleanups and removal of bush honeysuckle and other invasive plants, it now wants to turn efforts toward a broader effort.
Dan Sherburne, research director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, said the issues facing these waterways have changed over the years. Fewer and fewer of them are being channelized or lined with concrete. He expects them to remain mostly natural.
However, Sherburne said, the shear volume of storm water run-off that enters the creeks has become a major problem.
"They've been abused over the years and used essentially as storm sewers. They're dangerous places when there are storm water events. They can rise and flood people's basements, or worse, and lower property values of the houses along them," he said.
The flip side is the benefit these streams can provide to communities when they are cleaned up and the storm water flow is managed. Sherburne said children can then see nature in their own backyard, while the streams also become popular places for development of recreational trails and restaurants that want a scenic view.
"It works in everyone's benefit if these are healthy streams," he said.
But to curtail excessive amounts of storm water from entering the creeks, the coalition must get people to cooperate. Sherburne said this goes beyond any infrastructure improvement the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District might do. He said it needs to be a community effort, where people volunteer to use rain gardens and rain barrels and replace blacktop parking areas with permeable surfaces that allow water to soak through into the ground.
"People maybe would be anxious to do them, if they knew the benefits of doing them," he said.
These benefits can even be financial. In Portland, Ore., the municipality paid people $53 for each downspout they disconnected from the sewer system. Over ten years, people disconnected more than 49,000 downspouts and kept 1.2 billion gallons of storm water form reaching the sewer system.
Sherburne said if MSD would agree to offer a similar program it could prevent sewer overflows into homes and keep torrents of water from rushing through the creeks.
Haake said the area could adopt a program similar to the 10,000 Rain Gardens initiative in Kansas City, which uses grant money to provide residents with rain barrels and rain garden plants.
"Whatever the community wants to do, we can be the catalyst to make it happen," she said. "It's certainly a big slice we're cutting, but if we just take it bit by bit ever step is a step forward."
