Two Cheers for Conservation

I trekked down Highway FF to see what those earth-movers and heavy-equipment operators spent three weeks doing down by LaBarque Creek during the hotter weather. The conservation department or somebody demanded our landlord provide erosion control at this creek bend. Wait any longer and the LaBarque here, give or take a few flash floods, could undermine the road.

I could tell you why. More paving, especially a parking lot built in 2014 right next to the creek, makes runoff. This encourages the gentle LaBarque to rise and flood. During 2015's heavy rain this was no flash flood: the creek was torrential for a full day, eroding its own sandstone channel, filling its fishing and swimming holes with sand, changing  the creek's floor--it's now all shallow--and its shape, and dumping sand up and over the creek banks for 50 feet on either side, instantly altering the ecology of its entire riparian corridor. Back then I climbed a cliff to take a photo and show you the aftermath. Happened again in 2017. Flash floods now grow ever faster and taller, and when meeting this bend here they hammered a new channel through our other soil: clay.

Was I surprised to see rope for erosion control; 100 yards of woven rope to hold the creek bank all around its bend. Conservation people forced the landlord to uproot invasive cedars nearby and rope them into the creek bank's walls to try to mitigate the pounding this clay side of the creek will still take during flash flooding. Why? Because the other side is sand.

Rope doesn't solve the problem. The only real solution is to dredge or straighten the channel. The LaBarque did have its own very pretty and reasonable channel, but now it's clogged with sand.

Erosion Control on the LaBarque

LaBarque Creek has changed over the years, and the side nearer the highway, when it was in full flood, eroded way into the clayish soil until there was a 6-foot dropoff at the creek bend. A daydreamer walking in that meadow (formerly a baseball diamond) could have taken a step like Wile E. Coyote and plunged right into the drink. The Divine property is adjacent to newly public land, and the Missouri Department of Conservation came to here to stabilize this creek bank. Concerned about the same erosion, Demetrius and I had tried to plant native trees there some years ago. We had the right idea but wrong approach.

First, the conservation people cleared that meadow of its cedars, which are invasive and non-native trees here, but instead of letting 'em lie, anchored them to the creek bank sidewise and halfway in the water, as you see in the photo. They act like tree roots, capturing natural debris that helps rebuild the creek bank, while serving as habitat for fish and other water creatures. They filled in some of the slope with dirt. And then some volunteers planted, like, a thousand willow trees which will grow quickly and further stabilize the creek bank. You can see the willow slips, just about six inches tall, in the meadow, planted in rows, croplike.

This is green creativity at its best!