Thursday, 24 March 2022

Re: {Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders} Dredging Four Mile Run

VA DEQ reports 4MR has some 'impairments': chlordane in fish tissue and E. Coli everywhere. It also flags PCBs in fish tissue, but that's everywhere in the tidal Potomac watershed. I don't know enough to say how that would affect disposal of the sediment, but given that chlordane was banned in 1988 and they're still finding it in fish, it probably means there's still a decent amount of it in the river bottom.

-Miles
On Thursday, March 24, 2022 at 7:48:44 PM UTC-4 northstreet...@gmail.com wrote:
This is correct.  After the Corps built the initial project, the local entity is responsible for maintaining it.  Part of that maintenance is making sure it continues to pass the flows that it was designed for.  i doubt it is currently doing that which is why they need to clean it out. 

As far as the sediment, I imagine that it will go to a landfill or something, but i do wonder how polluted it really is.  Is there some significant industry upstream that would have been dumping heavy metals?  It may be that it is mostly just whatever you get from typical urban runoff.

On Thursday, March 24, 2022 at 10:24:26 AM UTC-4 andy...@gmail.com wrote:
Any time the Army Corps is involved in flood control it is typically utilitarian, but that is not to say the localities cannot push to incorporate other features such as "meander" and fish habitat. Hopefully they get a chance to put some bonus features in the flood control project.

On Wednesday, March 23, 2022 at 10:52:08 PM UTC-4 Miles wrote:
So around fifteen years ago Alexandria and Arlington put together an amazing plan to revitalize 4MR. The drawings are beautiful. They're like those sci-fi movies where the poor people have to live in one place and the rich people live somewhere so much nicer that it's oppressive. The drawings look like the rich place.

Eleven years ago I went to a public meeting about how they were ready to get to work. It was pretty exciting: one of the things they said they would do was improve the stream bed, because 4MR had 'lost its meander'. They were going to make a deeper main channel and lots of undercut holes for fish to hide in, that sort of thing. I was looking forward to fishing a totally different 4MR in a few short years.

Maybe six years ago or so, they did some of the work, made the pond, but 4MR still looks a lot like 4MR, and not much like the drawings. Still a real strong District 13 vibe. Not that I'm complaining -- I fish there.

Arlington says the project is 'complete' (here) but apparently there are still meetings happening and more work is planned to be done. If I'm reading it correctly, it looks like the dredging is to be integrated into the ongoing restoration project.

Point being, it's not clear to me whether the dredging will create the 'meander' the Master Plan calls for (with deep holes for fish), or if this is going to be a more utilitarian project strictly for flood control. Much as I hope to see the 'rich place' version of 4MR some day, I'm not holding my breath. But any channel in 4MR would be an improvement.

Also, today I learned that the stream that enters at Troy Park is called 'Lower Long Branch'. I did not realize Long Branch Nature Center is on the Upper Long Branch, so I thought maybe they were proposing to dredge from (Upper) Long Branch all the way to the Potomac in six months. This watershed map made it a lot clearer.

-Miles
On Tuesday, March 22, 2022 at 5:48:31 PM UTC-4 dlaz...@gmail.com wrote:
Andrew S. thank you for the new perspective. Much appreciated.

Daniel


On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 12:14 PM Andrew Sarcinello <andy...@gmail.com> wrote:
While it is not my specialty I have had a small role in developing 2 or 3 dredging plans at my job. My guess is the proper disposal of the dredged material costs just as much as the dredging itself. There are likely pollutants within the dredged material that require special considerations for storage so as to not leach back into the environment - it's only a theory since I have no direct knowledge of this project, but if true it would drive the cost up pretty quickly.

On Sunday, March 20, 2022 at 5:10:55 PM UTC-4 dlaz...@gmail.com wrote:
If those yellow circles represent the dredging area, it doesn't look like we are getting very much for our $5 million dollars.

Daniel


On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 11:34 AM 'Jeff Cook' via Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders <tidal-potoma...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
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