Juday creek restoration

Summary

In the mid-1990s, the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, was set to begin development on the Warren Golf Course. The University initially designed the course to have Juday Creek, a historic waterway with declining ecological health, run through it. To protect the creek, community groups worked with Notre Dame researchers to restore it in conjunction with the development of the golf course. After the restoration, researchers found native species returned to the creek and the aquatic environment improved. The creek is now used as an educational site and is a prominent natural feature on a championship golf course.  

Indiana has seen a dramatic decline in its wetlands, which in turn affects other aquatic ecosystems and water quality for people. Thirty-seven percent of the watershed where Juday Creek is located was wetlands in 1829, but by 2000, wetlands accounted for less than one percent of the area. With the loss of wetlands, nutrients and sediments were unable to be filtered out, which harmed the aquatic ecosystem and the people that used the water for drinking and irrigation. Wetland losses also increased the flood risk to property and infrastructure in the area.

The loss in wetlands was in part due to Indiana’s drainage law that was enacted in 1889 and has been regularly updated. The drainage law, in general, focuses more on agriculture than protecting aquatic ecosystems. Under the law, Juday Creek was reclassified as a drainage ditch instead of its historic designation as a creek. This distinction resulted in management activities, such as dredging, wood removal, and the mowing of buffer zones that disconnected the creek from its historical channel and allowed excess nutrients and sediment to enter the waterway. Additionally, traditional erosion control measures like riprap were deflecting the problem and pushing the nutrients and sediment further downstream.

After continued management activities and development along the creek, researchers found an abrupt loss of species: the number of fish species declined from six to one. Researchers also noted an 85 to 90 percent reduction in the insect-based food sources in the stream. When the researchers presented the evidence to County officials, the officials started to scale back some of the activities. However, by that point, development in the area made it difficult for those changes to make much of an impact on the ecosystem’s health.

To address the water quality issues in the creek, residents formed the Juday Creek Task Force. The Task Force developed goals and plans to protect the overall watershed. Specific actions included preserving and improving the creek’s populations of brown trout and other species, reducing erosion, establishing buffer strips, reducing mowing of stream side vegetation, and creating a planning process that would address future development, among others. However, once the University announced plans to develop the golf course, and the plans did not consider the aquatic ecosystem in the design, the task force reached out to Notre Dame researchers to determine what they could do to protect the aquatic ecosystem.

Using previously collected data, the research team looked at how best to purify the creek water and provide a pathway that would reduce the runoff and pollution. Due to the high levels of fine sediment in the original creek’s channel, the team decided to create new channels to reduce the level of sediment and nutrients.

To come up with a new design focused on creating a self-maintaining stream channel, increasing habitat diversity, and enhancing fish diversity, the team brought in a local environmental engineering firm. Working with the firm, the researchers settled on putting in two reconstructed sections that would run through the golf course before eventually connecting back to the original creek. They also decided to require a 20-meter buffer zone on both sides of the creek to help reduce nutrient runoff and limit interaction with the golf course. Requiring a buffer zone in the creek restoration plan was essential since the drainage law lets those areas be mowed at will, which allows nutrients from the surrounding area to run off into waterways more easily. In total, the restoration design included the following changes:

• 20 percent increase in stream length
• Eventual 67 percent increase in tree canopy over the stream
• 600 percent increase in the number of pools in the stream
• 700 percent increase in logs in and around the stream
• 60-times increase in boulders
• 35-times increase in gravel substrate
• 20-meter vegetation buffers on each side
• Measuring fish communities within two 60-meter sections in the restored branches and two 60-meter sections in the unrestored areas for comparison

Researchers created a five-year plan to monitor the impacts of the restoration using the 60-meter sections. Once the engineering firm completed construction, the researchers began their monitoring plan. They conducted habitat surveys, measured water temperature, and conducted fish surveys.

Funding

Construction cost $200,000 and the initial 5-year monitoring cost around $100,000. Funding came from U.S. Geological Survey grants and in-kind donations. Monitoring costs beyond five years were also partially covered by volunteer hours.

Timeline

Construction took place in the fall of 1997. The five-year monitoring plan ran from 1997 – 2002. Additional monitoring has occurred since 2002, with the fish community being monitored through 2013 and classes and research projects still working in Juday Creek as of spring 2021.

The researchers recognize the Pokégnek Bodéwadmik, and the displaced Bodwéwadmik and myaamiaki, whose ancestors were the previous caretakers of Juday Creek. While members of the indigenous communities did not directly work on this project, their knowledge of the plant communities was and is important in the management of the lands on which Juday Creek is located. The Pokégnek Bodéwadmik community is actively working on stream and wetland restoration in Michigan and Indiana. The researchers also note that Indiana’s drainage laws and institutions have resulted in past and current injustices to the indigenous communities, and when conducting restoration work, they should be part of the conversation.