America’s Ailing Rivers WASHINGTON, D.C. Bull ugs thrum. Dragonflies sizzle, n osprey glides over the tall arsh grass. A slice of Eden? Hardly. This 30-acre river marsh was leated last spring by the Army tops of Engineers. It’s still a tcn itive assemblage of dredge soil nd nursery-grown marsh plants, eld together with stakes, wire and ales of hay. Nature may never adopt Kenil vorth Marsh, but this small im irovcment on the otherwise silt smothered Anacosda River, a tri sutary of the better-known ’otomac, represents a new com mitment to go beyond cleaning up jolluted water and restore some of Straltjacketed Into a canal lor f lopd control between 1961 and 1971, the meaderlng Kissimmee River in south Florida lost half its length and most of its marshes. Now, in the first reversal of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project, the river isslatedto regain its curves, some already reflooded by test weirs. How can you be sure you’re getting the most milk/acre? Select a company dedicated to forage teeth# You can buy your forage products from a lot of companies But only a handful of those companies can back their products with hard tore data gathered over years of research We’ve been conducting forage quality tests on our products for four years now That’s four times as long as most other seed companies And we’ve assembled that research from field-scale tests Most companies base their findings only on small plot tests Our broad testing programs give us and you a much better indication of product performance Make sure your forage supplier can deliver quantity ... and quality When it comes to testing a forage product, most companies start and stop at tons/acre But Hoffman Seeds goes beyond that to test actual forage quality 4446 A • Relative Maturity 105 days 114 slde-by-alde comparison s over 3 years. £ O < & 4571 • Relative Maturity: 120 days 62 side-by-side comparisons over 3 years. 0> o < K America’s rivers and streams to their pre-industrial Age quality. “Kenilworth Marsh is the first positive change in the ecological balance of this river,” says Robert Boone, an Anacostia advocate. Dozens of waterway restoration projects are under way around the country. So far they have tended to be small a new curve for a creek straightened years ago, a stand of willows for an eroded em bankment. But recovery plans for this sum mer’s rampaging Mississippi Riv er may give the movement new ur gency and scale. “People remember when they were kids. They could swim in rivers, drink the water, catch fish,” Plot Mean 4671 0 Hoffman Seeds, Inc Landisville, PA 17538 1-800-776-7929 cfca Seeds says Jay West, of the Izaak Wal ton League of America, who leaches people how to restore wa terways. Those people are seeing the consequences of damming rivers, channeling water through con crete culverts and draining wet lands. Bottoms silt up. banks erode, fish and wildlife disappear. “Their river stinks, it’s full of sediment, nothing lives in it,” says West Many of the nation’s 3.2 mil lion miles of rivers and countless more miles of smaller streams have been altered to control floods, drain land for other uses or produce electric power. Only 2 percent of river miles are natural and free-flowing enough to quali fy as wild and scenic under the federal definition. “People don’t like what they see,” West says. “They’re taking back their rivers and streams.” Residents along Clear Creek, which tumbles out of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, have decided How 7 By getting individual forage analyses and using the results to assess production in terms of milk/acre So you not only get a measure of yield based on tons/acre, but also a measure of quality based on Relative Feed Value (R F V) ff»(st on a broad product offering for Northeast conditions If you’re like most dairy farmers, your forage needs are diverse Grazing Hay Haylage Silage That’s why we offer a complete line of products to meet alll your needs Best of all, our products Funk’s G® brand hybrids, alfalfas, forage grasses and pasture formulas have been genetically selected to meet Northeastern growing conditions We even offer moculants to improve bunk life As well as innovative packaging programs like Dairy Pak" to save you money Boost your mllk/acre How can you boost your milk/acre 7 Just talk to your local Hoffman Seeds sales representative Or call Hoffman Seeds toll free at 1-800-776-7929 You’ll learn about our full line of forage producing products like those below 4672 • Relative Maturity • 118 days 61 side-by-alde comparisons over 3 years. <P & Plot Mean Attain&r Aifatfa • Matunty Early Forage quality results Lancaster County. s> <£ I Lancaster Farming, Saturday. Octobtr 30. 1993-Bat their beloved waterway has been abused long enough. A coalition is looking for mon ey to stop toxic leaks from aban doned mines and is negotiating ir rigation schedules with farmers so that the creek won’t dry up in the summer. A brewery in Golden, Colo., has created a mile-long fly fishing run, complete with riffles and pools for trout, from what was a section that had flowed through a man-made channel. “Thanks to so many volunteers, it’ll cost only $170,000,” says Jack Hibbert, who planned the project for the Adolph Coors Co. Restorations can be expensive Kenilworth Marsh cost taxpay ers more than $2 million. But problems in small waterways of ten can be solved with low-cost “soft engineering” techniques. At the Izaak Walton League’s demonstration project on Dunloop Creek in West Virginia, erosion has been stopped by trees cabled to bare embankments. A home for new plant life has been created with bundles of willow branches anchored in the creek bottom. 4672 Pools for fish have been scoured out by the pressure of current forc ed around logs placed at right an gles to the shore. ‘These techniques were used in biblical times. We’re just redis covering them,” West tells Na tional Geographic. Dams that cut off fish migra tions have become a major focus of the river restoration movement At least a third of American native fish species are extinct or declin ing, a frequent price of cheap hy droelectric power, says Randy Showstack, of American Rivers, a national conservation organiza tion. No one knows how many dams block the nation’s rivers. Esti mates vary from 64,000 to 80,000. Conservationists are trying to alter or remove some of them. After the Woolen Mills Dam was knocked down on Wiscon sin’s Milwaukee River, bass and pike returned. Activists are cam paigning to have the Gilnes Can yon Dam removed from the Elwha River in Washington state, a spawning ground for all five na tive species of Pacific salmon. As 230 hydroelectric dams come up for federal relicensing over the next year, conservation ists will argue that the dams should either be knocked down or equipped with ladders and screens to protect fish. River activists emphasize the importance of the riparian zone, the biologically rich strip Of-land along waterways. Communities along Oregon’s Willamette River have preserved 2SS miles of riverfront greenway for wildlife and recreation. Den ver and other cities have created smaller greenways along urban rivers. Arizona has lost 90 percent of its riparian zone to development or flood-control projects. To make the point, wildlife activists distri buted what came to be known as the “bunny map,” showing the di versity of life in the remaining un developed riparian zone along the Santa Cruz River and its tributar ies. The map caught the public’s eye, Tucson, Ariz., now protects buffer zones around waterways. Massachusetts is considering a similar law. River ecologists argue that last ing benefits require skillful man agement of entire river systems, which sometimes span many states. The issue figures in de liberations on how to restore the flood-damaged levee system on the upper Mississippi in states such as Minnesota and lowa. “Out of this disaster can come an enormous opportunity to re store the basin,” says Randy Showstack. Law requires the Corps of Engi neers to rebuild the levees under its jurisdiction. But conservation ists, including some in the agency, argue that some recovery dollars would be better spent buying flood rights from farmers. Stretches of land unaltered by levees would, they say, slow fu ture floods and restore riparian zones. The only systemic river restora tion in the country, a massive re vamping of the Kissimmee River to restore Florida’s Everglades, is still in the planning stage. The corps will put curves back in the river, which the agency straight ened with channels three decades ago to drain the huge swamp for ' development “Like everybody else, we’re on a learning curve,” admits George Halford, a spokesman for the engi-
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