Volunteers, Conservancy work to stabilize Brokenstraw Creek streambank

- Photos provided to the Times Observer Volunteers for a number of service organizations partnered with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy to help stabilize the bank of the Brokenstraw Creek.
Luke Bobnar, Watershed Project Manager with the WPC, said that the Brokenstraw has been a focus of their work “for many years.”
“Within the past 10, we have focused on a combination of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ streambank stabilization techniques that provide immediate and long term benefits,” he explained. “The ‘hard’ stabilization includes log and stone structures that deflect flow from eroding stream banks, stabilize the toe, and provide overhead cover for fish. ‘Soft’ techniques include planting native trees and dormant, live cutting of riparian shrubs to enhance the structures’ stability, as well as provide long term inputs to the food chain – leaves and sticks that stream bugs eat, which in turn are fish food themselves.”
The work completed this spring was a continuation of a project initiated last year – construction of about 2,500 feet of log and stone fish habitat and bank stabilization structures at four locations.
Bobnar said that volunteers from more than a half dozen local, regional and state service organizations returned to the sites to “help jump start the woody revegetation process with live shrub plantings.”

Photos provided to the Times Observer Volunteers for a number of service organizations partnered with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy to help stabilize the bank of the Brokenstraw Creek.
“Volunteers drove pilot holes through and around the structures, then inserted dormant cuttings of native riparian vegetation like willows, dogwoods, buttonbush and ninebark into them,” he explained. “The stakes, about two feet long and ½-2 inches in diameter, will send out new roots and leaves, and eventually become individual plants themselves.
“The roots become a sort of living rebar that helps lace the stone and soil together, making for a less erodible streambank.”
The plantings will reach six to 12 feet in height, providing shade as well as leaves and small twigs “that form part of the base of the aquatic food chain,” he explained.
More than 3,000 were planted, though not all will survive.
“Live staking is a numbers game, where you overplant anticipating some mortality,” Bobnar explained. “Even if only 50-70% of them survive, which is reflective of past live staking projects we’ve done, the end result is a natural looking stream bank that is stronger and more ecologically productive than the vertical soil cliff that was present before.
“Additionally, through their natural ecology, the species selected have evolved to deal with all the hazards Brokenstraw Creek has to offer native riparian vegetation. So if beavers or ice flows nip them off at ground level, they’ll re-sprout from that rootstock, and continue to stabilize the bank.”