what we’re trying to do is take a stream
that really never needed to be piped
where no construction occurred and bring
that stream back to the surface we are
in Northwest Washington DC we’re about
three miles from the White House we’re
about a mile from the border of Maryland
the idea back in the distant not so
distant past actually was that you know
you had to get rid of storm water and
you had to get rid of the potential for
flooding and people didn’t really
understand that that stream ecology or
they didn’t really consider that to be
that important
so in our urban areas and in the suburbs
a lot of streams were just put into
pipes it has buried them for them in the
pipes and this fundamentally altered the
way the stream works and it made it not
working very well
when we build these projects we start by
filling the channel with that clean sand
we use that as the working platform is
the construction Hall Road and that haul
road itself doubles as the area where
the streambed will eventually be so we
start at the downstream end where the
water flows through and build structures
moving upstream to the end of the
project and then once we get to the end
of the project we’ll break open the pipe
and the water will begin to flow through
the whole project
a conventional approach to this kind of
restoration would be to cut the banks
back and disturb a lot of the riparian
zone this approach is called
regenerative stream channels and they’re
quite different than that old approach
and that they are bent on spreading the
water out to slow it down and filter it
through sands and gravels it’s not going
to be exactly like it was ninety hundred
years ago and so we’re trying to do is
make it as natural a system as we can so
we’re doing adaptive management will be
doing tweaking here and there for about
three to five years after the project is
completed to make changes to either take
a little less stormwater in or change
the structures a little bit to make sure
that everything is flowing smoothly and
that we don’t have any erosion problems
we don’t have any flooding problems
piping of streams is something that
happens across the world and it’s not DC
specific we do have a lot of streams
that have been pipe unfortunately only a
few streams have been delighted yeah
once they’re buried they oftentimes are
gone forever
you
that really never needed to be piped
where no construction occurred and bring
that stream back to the surface we are
in Northwest Washington DC we’re about
three miles from the White House we’re
about a mile from the border of Maryland
the idea back in the distant not so
distant past actually was that you know
you had to get rid of storm water and
you had to get rid of the potential for
flooding and people didn’t really
understand that that stream ecology or
they didn’t really consider that to be
that important
so in our urban areas and in the suburbs
a lot of streams were just put into
pipes it has buried them for them in the
pipes and this fundamentally altered the
way the stream works and it made it not
working very well
when we build these projects we start by
filling the channel with that clean sand
we use that as the working platform is
the construction Hall Road and that haul
road itself doubles as the area where
the streambed will eventually be so we
start at the downstream end where the
water flows through and build structures
moving upstream to the end of the
project and then once we get to the end
of the project we’ll break open the pipe
and the water will begin to flow through
the whole project
a conventional approach to this kind of
restoration would be to cut the banks
back and disturb a lot of the riparian
zone this approach is called
regenerative stream channels and they’re
quite different than that old approach
and that they are bent on spreading the
water out to slow it down and filter it
through sands and gravels it’s not going
to be exactly like it was ninety hundred
years ago and so we’re trying to do is
make it as natural a system as we can so
we’re doing adaptive management will be
doing tweaking here and there for about
three to five years after the project is
completed to make changes to either take
a little less stormwater in or change
the structures a little bit to make sure
that everything is flowing smoothly and
that we don’t have any erosion problems
we don’t have any flooding problems
piping of streams is something that
happens across the world and it’s not DC
specific we do have a lot of streams
that have been pipe unfortunately only a
few streams have been delighted yeah
once they’re buried they oftentimes are
gone forever
you
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