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Welcome to the Friends of Big Walnut Creek and Rocky Fork and
Blacklick Tributaries website.
The Watersheds served are from below Hoover Dam to the Scioto River Confluence. We hope
you share our enthusiasm for these natural wonders right in our own
back yard. The mission of the Friends of Big
Walnut Creek is to protect and restore Big Walnut Creek and Rocky
Fork and Blacklick Tributaries for the mutual benefit of the human
and natural communities and to enhance stewardship within the
watershed through education, collaboration, monitoring. and
community clean-up efforts.
Please view this link to: Our
Nine Goals to Improve the Lower Big Walnut Watershed
Friends of Big Walnut Meeting Agenda
WELCOME & INTRODUCTIONS
Discussion and Action: Support for the Saveson Family
TREASURER'S REPORT: Al
(Previously e-mailed)
STREAM STEWARDS REPORTS: Bob
B., Mark, Ellen, Dan
WATERSHED COORDINATOR'S
REPORT: Kurt
CHAIR'S REPORT: Bob K.
Year in Review and Goals for 2012
FOR THE GOOD OF THE ORDER:
All
To protect the water we
depend upon and the things that live in it.
Chair,FoBWC&T
Rocky Fork Metro Park Update
by Steve Studenmund,
Strategic Planning & Land Acquisition for Metro Parks of
Franklin County
Thanks' to the efforts of
the City of Columbus, City of New Albany and
Plain Township, Metro Parks entered into a
partnership with all three to develop a new
park in Plain Township in 2008. Since that
time 650 acres have been acquired in
northeastern Franklin County. An advisory
group of community members was established
in the fall of this year to assist
in planning for the new park. A conceptual
plan has been developed after a series of
public open houses that focus on typical
metro park facilities and visitor
experiences including hiking, biking,
picnicking, play areas, birding, habitat
improvements to improve water quality
and forest restoration areas. Planning for
the first phase of development planned for
2012, is underway and will include nature
trails and a parking area near an existing
wetland complex.
Meeting at the Emerging Rocky
Fork Metro Park
Several members of the Friends of Big Walnut Creek and Tributaries
and other interested persons walked and rode with Steve Studenmund,
Strategic Planning & Land Acquisition Manager for Metro Parks of
Franklin County. The Blacklick Park will be one special park when it
is open to the public (if they can do something with that mud).
There was only one vehicle that got stuck at the event.
The McKenna Creek Detention
Basin
by McKenna Creek resident Keith Webster
What, where & when
The detention basin is a project of the city of
Gahanna on city owned property (deeded by Stonehenge Company in the
early 2000's) that was formerly designated as parkland. The city
elected to destroy over 2 acres of woods between the Giant Eagle
store off North Hamilton Road south of Morse and 10 units within The
Woods At Shagbark condominiums in order to detain storm run-off from
the west Beem Ditch tributary that, together with east Beem Ditch,
forms McKenna Creek as it runs south through Shagbark and other
neighborhoods before emptying into Big Walnut Creek.
The project is, as of early November, a month
old and is, according to the city, scheduled to be completed in the
middle of December.
Why
McKenna Creek's flooding and erosion has been of
concern to the city and some of its residents for some time. Thanks
to continued construction north of Gahanna in Columbus storm run-off
in the past decade has increased beyond the capacity of Columbus to
sufficiently control it to prevent problems for Gahanna. Big-box
stores such as Kohl's, Meijer & Home Depot in addition to strip
malls just north of the Columbus/Gahanna border aren't required to
do more for water control than Columbus' city ordinances call for
and most of the structures were built before Columbus upgraded its
requirements. Columbus cannot tell these entities to upgrade and
will not spend money in their jurisdiction that will not benefit
their rate payers. Columbus will allow Gahanna to interact with
Columbus merchants on the matter but would retain the final say-so.
In 2006, according to Columbus city records, the
two municipalities met and Gahanna was given the okay to discuss
storm water run-off matters with Columbus merchants. Gahanna elected
not to do so.
Since then, deluges have become more intense,
run-off has increased and Gahanna residents have been subjected to
flooding and attempts to mitigate erosion (at least in Shagbark with
help from the city in the form of broken-up concrete paving).
According to comments by Gahanna city officials, Gahanna preferred
to look for solutions within Gahanna and after exhaustive studies by
the engineering firm, URS, decided to build a detention basin in its
present location.
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Questions
The source of Gahanna's problems with McKenna
Creek has been recognized for years as being north of Morse in
Columbus. While Gahanna doesn't seem to have notes on the 2006
meeting with Columbus, the former does admit to meeting the latter
in July 2008 at which meeting Gahanna said it would be doing studies
of the watershed and received necessary maps and data from the
Columbus properties. Why were not discussions with Meijer et al
begun in 2006 or even 2008? Instead, the city spent Gahanna
monies on studies by the multinational firm URS culminating with
that firm's engineering report of April 2010. In this report,
various alternatives for detention of the run-off were posited and
all but the present project rejected. The Giant Eagle-Shagbark site
was selected because: i) the city controlled the land; ii) other
alternatives required discussions and agreement with entities such
as ODNR and a possible alteration to an existing conservation
easement. Since the city had decided against any remedial activity
north of Morse in the years prior, the time required to overcome
these obstacles was politically untenable - especially after the
April 4, 2011 flooding.
The choice of URS to study the problem and
provide engineering was justified by the city as an offshoot of work
done by the firm on the Sycamore Run Watershed. However, why
weren't other alternatives explored, namely by asking for
bio-engineering firms to weigh in?
The city was asked if the plan for the project
had taken into account the water absorbing properties of the trees
that would be destroyed. The city did not have necessary information
on this subject. Why weren't the absorbent qualities of the
trees, vines and the 500 truckload of earth that were to be removed
taken into account?
The city was also asked how the project
related to the 2002 City Land Use goal of preserving natural areas
and corridors? In part, the city replied that the detention
basin would prevent downstream erosion but subsequently, when
pressed about preventing erosion, the answers were more equivocal as
in “erosion may be mitigated if residents engage in bank
stabilization.”
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What the detention basin will do
It will lessen the flooding downstream of the
concrete diversion structure by detaining water flowing along the
west branch of McKenna Creek (west Beem Ditch) in the basin. By
reducing the flooding which affects the top of the banks and
reducing the velocity of water in the channel it should also reduce
erosion.
What the detention basin will not do
It will not lessen the volume of run-off over
time since the detained water will still flow through the channel.
Volume of water is a main cause of erosion so erosion will continue
albeit not as noticeably.
Lessons to be learned from this contentious
issue
At present, municipalities confine solutions to
their run-off problems - even those caused by nearby entities as in
the case of Columbus causing most of Gahanna's McKenna Creek
problems – to within their own jurisdictions. In densely built areas
with little space for remedial actions this is a huge problem and
will only worsen with more construction. Co-operation between
municipalities is difficult as parties seek to protect their turf
and the monies involved. Columbus may “feel Gahanna's pain” when the
latter seeks to remedy the effects of Columbus' building and
grandfathered antiquated codes but Columbus isn't about to spend its
money on projects that do not benefit its constituents. Columbus
wrestles with the same problems in other parts of the watershed and
institutes remedies within its jurisdiction.
The solution lies in an approach to the
watershed as a whole. It will be difficult to attain such an
approach because, first, an entity has to be created to do just that
(or an existing entity assigned the authority to do it).
Second, the entity has to be funded and given
the teeth to make its judgments stick. It can be likened to the
Super Committee working on a national level to solve the nation's
debt problems. Instead of Republicans and Democrats with very
different ideas on cuts and spending, you'd have representatives
from various entities attempting to impose their views, so an
Independent Watershed Authority would have to hold sway staffed by
people independent from any of the affected entities. Funding should
not be too difficult: municipalities would have to assign a portion
of their municipal water fees to the body and agree that the IWA
would determine the best solutions to watershed problems what ever
and wherever they may be. Easy, no. A necessity, yes.
McKenna Creek Basin picture taken September15, 2011 by Keith Webster
McKenna Creek Basin picture taken October 31, 2011 by Keith Webster
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New: Watch and Listen to
"Fall on the Rocky Fork Creek"
Go to the following Link
![]() http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwF_0cTvl-s
Friends of Big Walnut
Newsletter
"An Urban Oasis" picture by Henry Cahalla
Author Henry Crahalla
describes Gahanna's nearby Creekside Park in the latest FOBWC
Newsletter in "An Urban Oasis (The Natural Side of Creekside Park)".
This, updates on the Blacklick Creek Watershed Plan by Kurt Keljo,
Streamside Protection by Bob Bostard and pictures from the Big
Walnut, Rocky Fork and Blacklick Watersheds can be found by
following link below ...
FOBWCnewsletter.pdf
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