Construction begins for stream project tagged in Keeler Bay plan

SOUTH HERO – After years of permitting and planning, construction started last month near a stream in South Hero for one of the first projects included in a recent strategic plan for improving water quality in Keeler Bay.

Dump trucks rumbled back and forth on Monday last week from property near Community Lane where a lone excavator dug into the banks of a narrow stream carved by years of heavy rain. Further upstream, in a bundle of wetland grasses and cattails near Route 2, frogs and insects splashed through standing water.

A pair of visiting engineers watched as the excavator physically widened the stream’s banks near where its channel rolled beneath some trees, digging shallow platforms along the stream’s flanks. During a brief pause, one of the engineers leapt over the stream to speak with the excavator’s operator.

According to engineers, the widened streambanks should help disperse water flowing through the small South Hero stream during bouts of heavy rain, ultimately slowing the stream’s flow and reducing risks for erosion as its waters tumbled toward Keeler Bay. Local conservation organizations planned to eventually add plants to the stream’s widened banks to help further absorb some of that expected water.

The project, essentially adding a manmade floodplain to the stream’s passage between Community Lane and the Two Heroes Brewery, would also see a series of small, stony berms added to the stream to serve almost like speedbumps for the water’s passage toward Keeler Bay. Ideally, according to engineers, those berms would blunt stormwater’s flow toward Keeler Bay and stymie risks for erosion.

“Because there’s nowhere for that water to dissipate energy, it just takes all of that material and flushes it downstream,” Joe Bartlett, an engineer from Fitzgerald Environmental Associates, said. “There will now be a small but accessible floodplain during big flows where water can spill out of the channel and drop off some of its sediment, which is full of nutrients.”

Funded by the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, the project near Community Lane is one of the first major developments for managing stormwater runoff following the adoption of a strategic plan for improving water quality in Keeler Bay. By reducing risks for erosion, according to engineers, the project would likely prevent some amount of local phosphorus pollution.

In early 2023, the Grand Isle County Natural Resources Conservation District and the South Hero Land Trust unveiled their strategic plan for Keeler Bay. The plan, drafted the year before with engineers from Fitzgerald Environmental Associates, proposed a suite of projects for improving water quality in Keeler Bay and prioritized several projects expected to have a larger impact for the Lake Champlain inlet.

According to representatives from those two organizations, the stream running between the Community Lane development and Two Heroes Brewery had been one of the first projects identified for the Keeler Bay plan. Engineers had also supported the project, citing both the support of local landowners and the project’s public location near South Hero’s historic village center.

It had taken several years following the strategic plan’s adoption, however, for the proper permitting and development needed to eventually bring an excavator to the targeted stream.

“There’s a lot of red tape you need to work through with funding and permitting, and a lot of this work needs to be done in clear phases,” the Grand Isle County Natural Resources Conservation District’s Molly Varner told The Islander. “When working on these projects, the timeline can be very slow.”

While phosphorus is a vital nutrient found in most natural environments, excessive levels of phosphorus can support the sometimes severe blooms of cyanobacteria choking waterways like Lake Champlain and its tributaries during the summer.

According to the Lake Champlain Basin Program, bays and tributaries in the northeastern reaches of Lake Champlain continue to struggle with phosphorus pollution. Much of that phosphorus flows into the lake through runoff, which can pick-up chemicals and pollutants from local roads and village streets, recently fertilized fields and eroding soils, and wash those pollutants into nearby waterways.

In the case of the stream in South Hero, pollutants can come from the stream itself as rushing rainwaters erode the stream’s passage and drag soils rich with nutrients like phosphorus downstream. Slowing that rush of rainwater, according to environmental engineers, is important to limiting the eventual impact an eroding stream can have on phosphorus pollution in Keeler Bay.

While conservation officials admitted the amount of phosphorus reaching Keeler Bay through the South Hero stream was likely minor, managing smaller waterways would likely be needed if officials wanted to control phosphorus runoff from the Champlain Islands currently draining toward Lake Champlain.

“This is very emblematic of what we have in the islands,” the South Hero Land Trust’s Guy Maguire said. “We don’t have a lot of rivers in the islands, but we have a lot of little streams like this, and while this stream isn’t contributing tons of phosphorus compared to our major rivers, it is eroding really badly.”

“The approach for something like Keeler Bay is going to be lots of small projects,” added Bartlett, the engineer from Fitzgerald Environmental Associates. “There’s no huge smoking gun to fix Keeler Bay.”

According to local conservationists, the restoration plan for the stream came with added environmental benefits, as well. Plans to eventually plant an artificial floodplain and land around the stream would add habitat in South Hero’s village, according to conservationists, and organizers from the South Hero Land Trust have already pulled together a list of native plants for an eventual planting project later this year.

The stream’s location near South Hero’s historic village center and between places people like to gather, including the nearby Worthen Library and the Two Heroes Brewery, also made the stream’s restoration a possible model for showcasing conservation practices for the larger public.

“That was a big reason why this project was one of our first priorities,” Maguire said. “The landowners are so interested in water quality and are so interested in the education aspects of this.”

According to environmental engineers, most of the initial construction for the stream’s stabilization was expected to wrap up before August, with a subsequent planting project led by the Grand Isle County Natural Resources Conservation District and the South Hero Land Trust planned for this coming fall when outside temperatures will be more favorable for new plants.

The stream is the first of two ongoing projects meant to improve water quality initially recommended under the Keeler Bay strategic plan. Representatives from local conservation organizations said they expected their second project, a shoreline restoration project intended to stabilize several lakefront properties abutting Keeler Bay against erosion, to also be completed later this year.

For the local conservation officials who helped develop an action plan for Keeler Bay, finally installing the first of the plan’s proposed improvements was a welcome moment and came as interest in water quality projects grew elsewhere in the Champlain Islands.

“It’s gratifying,” Varner, whose organization was now helping community members in North Hero develop a strategic plan for restoring water quality in Carry Bay and Pelots Bay, said. “There’s been movement all along, but it’s very nice to finally have something come to reality.”

“It feels like a snowball,” Maguire added. “It’s gaining momentum.”