The People of FCWC 2017

 

 

Everyone who participated in Flower City Work Camp has a unique story to tell.  I want to tell my story in terms of some of the people who God spoke to me through and who blessed my time this week.

Rob – I went to High School with Rob.  He lived a few doors down the street from the church on Pixley Road.  He attended our youth fellowship here with me when I was a student at GCHS.  Like many of you young people, God became real to me and to Rob through youth ministry.  We lost track of each other after High School, but several years ago I reconnected with Rob at FCWC.  This year he and a buddy of his were gofors for another group of sites that didn’t include ours.  On Wednesday we ran into a problem with the electrical system.  He happened to show up on our site just to pay us a visit and in one of my better decisions of the week, I asked for his help (instead of saying that I could figure it out) in resolving the problem.  He not only dove right in, he reached the limits of his expertise and needed to call in an even bigger expert to trace down the electrical problem.  You see, the electrical wiring in these old homes is pretty poor.  There are no ground wires, and the manner in which things were wired together was not up to the electrical codes we have today.  His expert found the problem and the next morning he went over to our site and installed a new ceiling light that we didn’t planned on and a new electrical outlet to replace a very unsafe one.  Best of all, I deepened my connection with him, met his wife and HS sweetheart and made a commitment to keep in closer touch with him.

Savannah – Sometimes we give special attention to the juniors and seniors on our sites, and we make some of them “student shepherds”.  The student that I was most impressed with was Savannah, a homeschooled 8^th grader who lives in Pittsford and worships with people in Chili.  This girl was so willing to help in whatever way we asked her, she didn’t waste time socializing too much, and she was curious about everything.  At the end of one of the days at our site, she came upstairs to where I was discussing the electrical wiring problems we were having and how we were going to sort them out.  I thought she might be stopping up to urge me to leave because everyone else was ready to go.  Instead, she told me that she wanted to understand more about the electrical problems we were having and how we were going to solve them.  At the end of the last day, she was there to help me reinstall the blinds that two of my other students repeatedly failed to properly install.  I told Savanah and I wrote to her and told her that she was going to become someone special in this world because she applied herself to whatever task she took on at camp.

Tyreese and Marcus – These boys lived at the house we worked on with their grandmother.  I think I met Marcus’s father once when I was there but essentially their dads were absent the three days we were there, and sadly they are probably absent most of the time.  We had planned to paint their bedrooms with a basic off-white paint, but one of ours site leaders, Scott, asked them what color paint they wanted, checked it with their grandmother, and went out and bought the paint for the rooms.  Then our students worked along with each of these boys to paint their rooms, and in the process of working with them, I got to know them.  Yes, they lacked some discipline, and they lacked some confidence in taking on some of the repairs but they were willing to learn and to work.  They showed pride in some of the things they had done.  One had built a stool at Boy Scouts.  The other ran 5K’s and showed me some of his medals.  So although these boys lacked the good parenting that most us have, they showed a willingness to learn and took pride in their work.  We gave them buttons and shirts to make them “official” and they certainly felt included by our students which was such a blessing to them.

So, yes, some work was done on 53 homes this past week, but the best work of all was the work that God in us through the relationships that were either formed or rekindled at FCWC.  That’s what FCWC, that’s what Christianity, is all about.  It’s about the relationship between us and God and about the relationships between all of us who receive Christ.

Using Native Vegetation in Ecosystem Restoration Projects

Ecosystem and streambank restoration projects use a wide variety and large quantities of native vegetation to economically restore wetlands and streambanks, while providing adequate armoring to withstand the velocities and shear stresses from river flows.  Vegetative materials include: wetlands or uplands seed mixes; bare rooted seedlings or saplings; balled and burlap trees; dormant live cuttings (brush, stakes, poles) and potted plants.  This photo shows a dormant live willow stake that has sprouted in Spring after being driven into a bare bank during the dormant.  This stake is about ½” diameter, and projects about 12” from the bank.  The stake is buried 3’ to 4’ into the bank.  Native cuttings can also be used to provide brush layers, fascines, dormant live stakes and poles and vegetation soil reinforced systems. 

The use of vegetation can reduce the extent of riprap armoring, while still providing the necessary resistance to shear stresses and velocities on the upper banks of a stream.   The upper range of permissible shear stresses of soil bioengineering measures has been found to range from 1 to 5 lbs/square foot, with a corresponding range of permissible velocities from 3 to 10 feet/second.  Velocities and shear stresses need to be determined through hydrologic and hydraulic modeling of the river reach to determine worst case velocities and shear stresses.  See link to publication below: http://el.erdc.usace.army.mil/elpubs/pdf/sr29.pdf

On many of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park projects, we utilized native plant materials found within the park, rather than having the contractor provide cuttings from off site.  These included: sandbar willow; black willow; red ozier dogwood and some others.  The Park’s landscape architect would identify areas within the park from which the contractor could harvest plant materials.  This is both economical and environmentally sustainable, since the harvested plant material will eventually grow back, and the cost to cut and deliver the plant material from within the park is significantly lower than purchased material.  One should be aware not to specify plant material that is under distress from an invasive species, as is the case with Green Ash.  At one time cuttings from Green Ash were specified for use in the upper zone of restored riverbanks until it became known that ash trees were being harmed by the Emerald Ash Borer.  Plant material cannot be relied upon to provide armoring below mean water level.  In those areas, a riprap revetment should be used, and should extend up the bank to a level corresponding with the channel forming discharge or ordinary high water.

Plant material, when properly engineered, is an environmentally sustainable means to effectively stabilize riverbanks.

The Importance of Engineering in Ecosystem Restoration

Here’s a streambank restoration project on a Cuyahoga River tributary that, from the photo, looks to have been missing some important engineering.  The designer placed a woven drainage filter fabric on a steep, excavated bank, and installed rounded cobbles against the fabric to restore the eroded streambank. The streambank restoration failed during a subsequent flooding event, destroying the repair and exposing bare banks that will contribute detrimental sediment to the aquatic ecosystem.  This failure, like many, can be attributed to at least three factors: the rock; the filter drainage fabric; and the toe protection.  

Rock used to protect a streambank must be engineered because the stability of the rock must conform to the laws of physics.  Those laws, when applied to streambanks, account for: the median size of the stone (D ₅₀), specific gravity of the stone, specific gravity of water, a metric to represent the uniformity of the gradation of the stone, the relationship between the thickness of the layer and the largest (D₁₀₀ ) particle size, channel bend radius, channel bottom width, water depth, bank slope, stream velocity, and a stone stability factor.  The stability factor varies depending on whether the stone is angular, typical of quarried rock, or rounded, typical of glacial material found in a gravel pit.  Studies have shown that rounded stone is 20% less stable than angular stone of the same size and specific gravity.  The angularity naturally interlocks, tying the entire rock layer together.      

Drainage fabric is available in two types: woven and non-woven.  The woven fabric is thin, smooth, and slippery.  The non-woven is thick, soft, and spongy.  In this application, the woven fabric could have contributed to the failure due to its slippery properties.  Better yet, the fabric could have been eliminated entirely and replaced with either an engineered bedding layer of smaller size stone, or by using a thicker layer of armoring stone that is self-filtering. 

The photo does not indicate whether some type of stone toe protection was provided.  All streambank restoration projects should have either a launchable stone toe or a stone toe that’s excavated into the channel bed at the toe of the slope to prevent failure of the bank when scour occurs in the channel, and it will scour.   Although scour at the toe of a slope is most likely to occur at the outside of a bend, in this photo the stream is flowing into the picture, and the failed streambank protection is located in a straight section of the channel just upstream of a bend.  Even straight sections of channel will experience toe scour and should have a stone toe.

On riverbank restoration projects, therefore, it is essential to do the engineering studies to properly design the restoration to provide long term stability to the streambank so that the aquatic, cultural and other resources can be preserved. 

Understand How the River Works...Before You Begin Work

Those of us who work with rivers and natural ecosystems need to approach our work carefully, with a measure of ignorance, remembering that rivers are complex. We must come with a clear set of objectives, and seek to understand how the river is working before we can begin our work. I’ve read many books and journal articles but Luna Leopold’s A View of the River ( http://www.amazon.com/View-River-Luna-B-Leopold/dp/0674018451 ) has been most helpful. Leopold theorizes that the river system has two tendencies: to minimize total work done in the system, and to equalize the power per unit bed area. He ties these tendencies back to entropy as used in the second law of thermodynamics, indicating that as energy becomes more evenly dispersed in the river system that the possibility for energy to be used for mechanical work is decreased, thus increasing entropy.

The river system, with both its natural and man-made obstructions, and its sediment load are significant aspects that play into the dynamic equilibrium of the river as expressed in Lane’s relationship.

Qs ds ∝ Qw So

Lane theorized that the product of sediment discharge (Qs) and sediment size (ds) is proportional to the product of river discharge (Qw) and channel slope (So). The side by side photos of a riverbank restoration project are a story in how rivers respond to changes to these variables.

The photo on the left shows an area of significant bank erosion between the downstream end of an earlier bank restoration project and the upstream side of a bridge from which the photo is taken. The missing piece of information is that the former single span truss bridge was replaced with a two span deck girder bridge at about the same time as the first riverbank restoration project was constructed. I have never been a fan of two span bridges over water because the center pier ends up as an obstruction located in the highest velocity portion of the river causing a rise in backwater from losses caused by the pier, and bank instabilities caused by changes in sediment carrying capacity. In this case, during larger floods, the pier presented a greater obstruction, raising the water surface upstream of the bridge, reducing channel velocity, and depositing sediment that created a center bar. The center bar became armored with cobbles, causing flow to become divided and directing the flow to the unprotected bank, downstream of the first riverbank restoration project, which contained finer particle soils. Scour at the toe of the bank resulted in a translational failure of the upper bank. The restoration, shown in the photo on the right, included removing the center bar and extending the bank protection (riprap to the 2-year flood level and dormant live stakes on the upper slope) to the bridge’s abutment.

As this example shows, understanding how the river system works on both a macroscopic and within the river reach being considered is essential before beginning our work.

Finding Sensible Solutions When Values Compete

This photo illustrates the challenge of restoring a riverbank in a place where historic and recreational resources abound and are equally important. At this location along the Cuyahoga River (flowing away from the observer) has a large meander that is naturally migrating downstream and towards the Ohio and Erie Canal towpath shown on the right side of the photo. This reach of river was legislated into the National Park System as a National Recreation Area before later becoming a National Park. Its stated purposes included “…..preserving and protecting for public use and enjoyment the historic, scenic, natural, and recreational values of the Cuyahoga River and adjacent lands in the Cuyahoga Valley, and for the purpose of providing for the maintenance of needed recreational open space necessary to the urban environment”.

Historic resources in the park that also serve as recreational facilities include the Ohio and Erie Canal (including the towpath), the Valley Railway, and a number of houses and bridges. Many of these are on the National Register of Historic Places, and a portion of the Ohio and Erie Canal National Heritage Corridor, runs through the area. Natural resources include the river and a number of ecosystems with associated flora and fauna located in the river and in the river valley, as well as the rural countryside. As to recreational value, Cuyahoga Valley National Park is the 10th most visited park in the National Park system.

The problem to be solved at this and other locations in the park is to protect and preserve a park resource from the advance of the river or tributary using natural materials (rock riprap and vegetation). At this location, because the towpath was still no closer than about 30 feet from the top of riverbank and because the precise location of the future impingement could only be guessed, the solution was to construct several hundred feet of buried rock riprap windrow with a volume of little greater than one cubic yard per running foot. Windrows are designed to “launch” when a meander progresses enough to expose the buried rock, and once launched, to provide a thick enough sloping layer of riprap with large enough riprap to adequately protect the feature. A drainage fabric separated the top of riprap from the backfilled native soils, and dormant willow poles were planted along one side of the excavation to establish some native, deeper rooting vegetation.

One could allow the naturally meandering river to run wild (Cuyahoga means “crooked” river), thereby maximizing ecological values at the expense of threatening the historic and recreational values. On the other extreme, one could design a highly engineered system of concrete or sheetpile protective system to ensure that the river would advance no closer to the towpath trail. In this setting, neither extreme, both of which represent a zero sum game approach, offers a sensible solution. Rather all the values for which this park was created are balanced to provide a minimally invasive ecological solution that provides reasonable assurance that the resource will be preserved and that the public will be able to enjoy it.

Lessons Learned in Restoring Natural Ecosystems - Introduction



There’s been a significant effort by professionals in the fields of water resources/environmental engineering and aquatic biology to restore small and large degraded ecosystems whether they are located in coastal wetlands, freshwater wetlands, estuaries, rivers or streams. These systems are sometimes associated with an environmental permit for new project, but can also be associated with an existing feature that may be threatened by a natural system. For 10 years, I had the pleasure of working as our company’s lead person for projects at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Many of those projects involved the protection of man-made cultural, historic and recreational features from erosion and flooding from nearby streams and rivers. The photo above shows Yellow Creek (flowing towards the foreground) just upstream of its confluence with the Cuyahoga River where the creek crosses under the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad. There’s a large bend (meander) in the stream at this location. The proximity of the creek to the railroad has threatened the stability of the railroad embankment on the right side of the photo. As part of this restoration, quarried rock riprap was placed along the railroad embankment to about the level of a 2-yr flood, and then extended away from the railroad as a low rock berm that separates the bank of the stream from the floodplain behind it where wetland trees, shrubs and grasses were planted. Natural vegetation was also placed on the railroad embankment above the top of the rock riprap. As a result, the natural effects of the stream meandering are arrested for the sake of preserving the cultural, historic and recreational resource. I led the planning, design, and construction oversight of a dozen projects similar to this one in the 23 mile Cuyahoga River corridor that comprises this National Park.

These projects provided me with valuable lessons in ecosystem restoration. The lessons helped these projects to be successful in meeting their intended objectives, and are universal in nature. I’ll elaborate more in subsequent blogs on these following lessons:

• Balancing cultural/historic/recreational values with ecological values.
• Understanding how rivers work.
• The importance of engineering in ecosystem restoration.
• The benefits of using of natural and native materials.
• The limitations of human efforts in the good work of restoration.

Serving in the Communion Service

One of the monthly events I most look forward to is the Parkminster Communion service, which happens on the first Sunday of every month. Sometimes I participate like all the congregants, and other times I get to serve by anointing with oil those who choose to be. This past Sunday I received an email sometime on Saturday to serve and I responded immediately with a “yes”.

I take on the role of an anointer feeling both the joy of being together with other believers, and feeling compassion for them. As they walk towards me after receiving the bread and cup, I try to remember their name. When they stop in front of me I speak their name before I begin to pray for them, while making the sign of the cross on their forehead with the oil from a tiny jar. While I typically don’t know their concerns, I know the God who loves them and I know He desires them to be healed. It might be a young married woman who desires a child, a teenager who’s struggling with their sexual identity, an adult dealing with physical pain or a discouraging doctor’s report. I often pray for the men I anoint that God would empower them to be the men that he has called them to be, filling them courage to be bold for Him.

Now and then I get to anoint those in my family, and especially Corinne. This Sunday, nine days after major surgery, I discerned that I should pray that God would continue to hear her far beyond what she could expect or imagine. I prayed that He would give her a bigger healing than she could ever expect.

In so many of the Bible stories, Jesus takes an event and makes it into much more. He takes the funeral of Lazarus and makes it into a resurrection. He creates a feast with extra food to spare for a weary, hungry crowd from 5 loaves and 2 fishes. He takes a wedding that’s short on wine and treats its participants to a finest of wines. In the same way, I want to believe, for each one that comes forward, that God desires a healing, an experience, a life that’s full of abundance, beyond their wildest dreams. That’s why don’t turn down the opportunity to serve His people through the communion service.