After evaluating several road culverts Monday in the Mill Creek watershed to see if fish are passing through, Dalton State College senior Kendra Goble said she is happy she is “making an impact.”
Since mid-June, Goble and recent Dalton State graduates Zoe Clark and Margaret Bennett have assessed approximately 300 culverts — structures that channel water past an obstacle or underneath a roadway — along the Mill Creek watershed in Dalton and Whitfield County as part of a summer project organized by Ani Escobar, a Coosa Basin aquatic biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and Stephen Bontekoe, the executive director of the Limestone Valley Resource, Conservation & Development Council (RC&D).
The motivation behind the project, Escobar said, is primarily focused around the trispot darter, a small, federally-threatened fish that’s native to the Coosa River Basin and found within the Mill Creek watershed.
“This fish makes a migratory run upstream to spawn, but instead of staying in the main river channel, it makes this run up into these really tiny side channels of bigger rivers and streams,” Escobar said. “The habitats that they use during the winter for spawning are important because they’re protected from other predators who don’t really use these smaller side channels. When we put in necessary infrastructure like roads, driveways or parking lots, a lot of times we’re putting a culvert that can pass water through, but it can’t actually pass fish through.”
That can sometimes create a culvert built slightly smaller than the natural stream channel would be, Escobar said.
“The outflow of the culvert is actually higher than the natural stream channel, so not only can the trispot darter not swim upstream through the culvert, but the perching also creates different hydrologic conditions downstream,” she said.
Because the trispot darter is a federally-threatened species, Escobar and Bontekoe said they applied for a grant through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s America the Beautiful program that looks to provide grant funding opportunities for new conservation and restoration projects throughout the country.
Initial phaseThe project began in April. Goble, Clark and Bennett began interning in June, assessing local culverts for fish passage suitability as part of the first phase.
“Our Dalton State crew has been working really hard to visit all of these road crossings and logging data,” Escobar said.
The students log the data into the Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership (SARP) database, which includes free, open-source data available to view, such as assessed stream crossings in the area and their fish passability score.
“Then staff on the SARP’s team will do quality control and give it a ranking,” Escobar said. “We hope to have that data available to look at by the fall.”
Bontekoe said the project involves the work of a variety of partners, including the Limestone Valley RC&D, a nonprofit serving 11 counties in Northwest Georgia, including Whitfield and Murray, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Dalton State College and The Nature Conservancy.
He said the grant prioritizes assessment and data collection before a number of culverts are selected for potential replacement “to convert them from their current status to an aquatic organism passage-friendly upgrade.”
“The interns have been assessing all June and July, and will continue assessing for the foreseeable future,” he said. “We’ve got multiple years in this project. Right now, we’re in the early phases and then we’ll move more into the implementation phase later on.”
Future improvementBontekoe said the immense amount of biodiversity in the area is what “spurred the desire” to “make sure that the species that are there are able to use the creeks and thrive in their habitat.”
“As we coexist with the species, we’re paving over their habitat and putting in pipes,” he said, “and those pipes may be limiting their ability to swim upstream or find breeding partners. So doing these assessments and these changeouts, the goal would be to reopen some of that aquatic habitat in such a way that we can continue to thrive with our communities, but also that we do it in such a way that the water quality and habitat is improved, and the species that live in the water are able to thrive.”
That involves identifying the culverts that are in need of changeout and replacing them with properly-sized structures that allow for fish passage and natural streamflow.
“Part of the funding we received from that grant is designated for replacing structures, so what we’re hoping to do is just increase the habitat connectivity for these little fish so that they can get from those main steam summer habitats into those smaller tributaries that they use as winter breeding habitats safely,” Escobar said.
Bennett, who graduated from Dalton State in May with a degree in biology, said she applied to intern after hearing about the project from her former biology professor, John Lugthart.
“We started in June and we’ve done around 300 culverts already,” she said. “Our main thing we’re doing is we’re physically measuring everything, taking the height and the width, noticing if there’s any drops in the water speed and comparing it to how it is upstream to see how that culvert’s affecting that particular stream. Then all of that info goes into the database and they’ll use that to determine if this is a significant barrier for the fish or not.”
Bennett said she worked with Escobar and Bontekoe on similar projects, and jumped at the summer opportunity because it “aligned with (her) interests.”
“I thought it would be good experience for my future career,” she said. “I’d really like to get into any sort of wildlife biology or conservation, going along with more freshwater conservation. I’ve currently been volunteering at the Tennessee Aquarium (in Chattanooga).”
Living out a dreamClark, who graduated in December with a biology degree, said she also found out about the project through Lugthart.
“We’re really hoping that we can extend the trispot darter’s habitat and bring it back from being endangered,” she said. “With the faulty culverts, they’re not allowed to pass through and go further upstream where they can possibly spawn and have more habitat space.”
Clark said she has enjoyed assessing the culverts and participating in the project.
“This is one thing that I basically went to college to do,” she said. “I love the aquatic side of biology and doing stuff like this, being out in the water. It’s basically my dream job. I’d really like to become an aquatics biologist, just specifically working in freshwater ecology and stuff like that.”
Goble, who’s majoring in biology with a concentration in environmental science, said she was looking for internships to take part in during the summer before coming across the project.
“Knowing that we might be able to help some of (the culverts) get replaced, it’s kind of cool to know you’re making an impact,” she said. “I really wanted to work locally and help out the community. People really don’t think about culverts a lot or the streams that they’re walking over but it matters to the environment.”
Goble said spreading awareness of the importance of replacing troublesome culverts is key.
“Some are pretty dangerous for fish and aquatic life in general, but, especially if they fail, the water can sometimes flood roads, so it’s also bad for infrastructure,” she said. “The water doesn’t really go through them, it just kind of pools around them.”
Lugthart said he is glad to see three of his former students participating in the project.
“It’s one thing to be in a class and learn about these different issues, but it’s another thing to actually get out there and get involved,” he said. “Many of these students want to go into conservation careers, so this kind of experience makes them that much more competitive for these kind of positions.”
Escobar said Clark, Bennett and Goble are all “knocking it out of the park” with their work in assessing and surveying each culvert.
“The data they’re collecting is great and really important,” she said. “We did a similar project several years ago in the Holly Creek watershed with another student crew, and we replaced (around) four structures based on that data. So the work that these students are doing now is going to have a direct conservation impact in the future for the trispot darter.”
Escobar said the project’s success is dependent on partnerships.
“None of us would have the capacity to be able to do this work on our own, so by bringing this partnership together and really leveraging each of our strengths, that’s how we’re going to be able to implement it,” she said. “Because ultimately our goal is to be able to recover the trispot darter and get it off of the Endangered Species Act list. No one organization can do that alone.”