Ribbon-cutting ceremony at Reedy Creek Stream Restoration Project was a success

On June 4th, the City of Charlotte hosted an on-site ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the project’s successfully partnerships, environmental improvements, and community benefits. Check out the below slideshow of photos from this event.

About the project: Wildlands was selected to perform this first design-build project to generate stream and wetland mitigation units for the City of Charlotte Umbrella Stream and Wetland Mitigation Bank. This pilot project is located within the environmentally significant Reedy Creek Nature Preserve and involved the restoration of deeply incised, eroded stream channels to appropriately sized bankfull channels with access to a floodplain and preservation of existing high-quality streams and wetlands. The project consists of approximately 26,400 linear feet (LF) of stream restoration and 15,600 LF of stream preservation for a total of 26,000 stream mitigation credits. Approximately 1.0 wetland mitigation unit will be accomplished through enhancement and preservation of wetlands.

CLICK HERE to visit the project website.

Wildlands’ Falling Creek Mitigation Site withstands 30” rainfall event during Hurricane Florence

Wildlands completed construction on the Falling Creek and Grantham Branch stream and wetland mitigation banks near Grantham, NC in March of 2018. In September of 2018, Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wilmington and slowly moved across the state shattering rainfall records throughout eastern NC. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported a rainfall total of 25 inches in nearby Mt. Olive, NC. Detailed records maintained by local hog farmers for their waste lagoons indicated that as much as 30 inches of rain fell on these two mitigation banks over a three-day period.  These two banks restored, enhanced, and preserved over 35,000 feet of stream and 320 acres of wetlands.  The hurricane only caused damage to two stream reaches, each under 500 feet. The damage was the result of streambank erosion from streams outside of the project that deposited within the project and filled these stream reaches. At the time of the damage, repairs were thought necessary but after a second assessment one month later, the streams appeared to be moving the sediment through the system and ‘self-repairing.’  Within three months, the damaged streams had returned to the as-built condition and no repairs were necessary.  This project serves as further evidence that when streams are restored to natural dimensions and pattern storm events dissipate energy properly within the channels and on the floodplains and are resistant to damage.  The below photos were taken in September 2018, after Hurricane Florence.