Conservation groups team up to stabilize banks of Mill Creek

Larry and Janet Smith long shared a quiet concern about the eroding banks of Mill Creek in Ligonier Township.

In 1992, the Rector couple bought a summer cottage seven miles south in the Oak Grove community along the tributary of Loyalhanna Creek.

Over time, they noticed that water from nearby Hannas Run was striking Mill Creek's eastern bank and slowly eating away at their property.

"We just kept losing the bank. In 15 years, we've watched about six or seven of our trees fall in the creek," said Larry Smith, president of the Boys Brigade Camp Association, a group of nine property owners along Mill Creek in Oak Grove.

"That's a significant number of trees, and that wasn't just happening on our property, but with the entire association," Smith said.

The Smiths took their concerns to a Forbes Trail Trout Unlimited meeting in 2004.

Last fall, Westmoreland County commissioners identified Mill Creek as one of 21 conservation projects to be funded under the state's Growing Greener II County Environmental Initiative.

The Mill Creek project -- jump-started by an extensive report and conservation plan by Forbes Trail Trout Unlimited -- will be the first stream stabilization project completed in Westmoreland, according to commission Chairman Tom Balya.

"We spent one hot summer walking that stream, taking samples and getting the data for that report," Smith said.

The lack of stream-side trees and other vegetation, along with Mill Creek's 6-foot-high, almost-vertical banks of soft, loamy soil, made the Oak Grove area extremely vulnerable to erosion. Soil ripped free from the banks polluted the stream, diminishing the quality of water headed downstream to Ligonier, Latrobe, New Alexandria and other communities.

Solutions were found by a group that included Forbes Trail Trout Unlimited, the Westmoreland Conservation District, the Loyalhanna Watershed Association, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, the Youth Conservation Corps, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and local landowners.

"A large log had fallen into the stream against the east bank of Mill Creek and was helping to deflect the force of Hannas Run," said Rob Cronauer, a watershed specialist for the conservation district. "So we added eight more like it ... at an angle that would deflect the flow of the water from Hannas Run."

Team members also added a large mass of tree roots and 100 tons of stone to blunt the force of the water flowing in from Hannas Run. They planted 100 willow branch cuttings to help to stabilize a 200-foot section of the stream bank. They regraded the bank to soften the severe slope.

Beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday, the work group will put the finishing touches on the job by planting 20, 6-foot-high trees to bring even more stability to the stream bank.

"I've seen a lot of benefit in the work that's been done," Smith said.

All told, the project cost an estimated $7,000, Cronauer said. The allotted state money and grant money from the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy financed both $2,200 in excavation work by John Hardiman of Ligonier and $800 for the trees to be planted.

"Everything else was donated, from rock to topsoil to people's time," Cronauer said.

A.J. Panian can be reached at apanian@tribweb.com.
Back to headlines