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Kids Creek Is Still Polluted -- But Improving

David Cassleman

Local groups have spent more than a decade trying to clean up Kids Creek in Traverse City. Although the stream looks clean, scientists say it’s still polluted. Runoff from storms is polluting the stream as it winds north along US-31, eventually flowing into the Boardman River.

Dozens of other rivers and lakes in northern Michigan have similar problems. And people are finding it difficult to restore damaged waterways to acceptable standards.

Sarah U’Ren remembers the old Kids Creek. One stretch flowed underneath Munson Medical Center in a culvert spanning longer than a football field. U’Ren is Program Director for The Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay.

She’s standing where Kids Creek now runs, after a new stream channel was built on the site. It’s a more natural environment than the concrete tunnel.

“It’s a nice meandering channel," U'Ren says. "There’s some root wads on the outer banks to help prevent erosion.  There’s nice cedars in here, there’s dogwoods, native plants and vegetation.”

All that new greenery is limiting the amount of storm-water runoff that can rush into the stream by providing a barrier where water can seep into the ground instead. Heavy runoff from storms harms the insect and fish population. It flushes the stream with the pollutants and sediment it carries from across a large area of land.

But U’Ren thinks that things are looking up for Kids Creek since the new channel opened.

“Since then it’s just been growing and getting better and better," U'Ren says. "We see lots of fish in here all the time now.  There were fish before but I think the fish are a little happier because it’s such a nice habitat."

Credit David Cassleman

The state has classified Kids Creek as an “impaired waterway” because of damaging runoff for years. Joe Rathbun, with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, says it's a complicated problem.

"You’ve got stormwater -- the volume of stormwater coming off the developing landscape up there around Traverse City.”

Rathbun monitors clean up projects across the state. He follows a report the state publishes for the US Environmental Protection Agency every other year as a guide. It’s an important list -- naming all the rivers and lakes that are deficient in some area according to federal regulations.

Torch Lake and Lake Charlevoix are on the list. The state says Kids Creek isn’t able to support the insects and fish that a healthy stream would have.

These problems are similar to those on a stream near Ann Arbor. It’s called Malletts Creek – and it’s on the list too. Paul Steen is an ecologist for the Huron River Watershed Council.

“It’s had a lot of erosion issues," Steen says. "It has really bad flashy storm-water flows. And the city of Ann Arbor and the county government have really come in over the last ten years or so and have just done a lot of on the ground work.”

Steen says Mallets Creek has been on their radar going back twenty years. They’ve put much time and money into it and they’re now starting to see some improvements.

“It’s pretty exciting," Steen says. "Last fall we had our best sample for the macro-invertebrates in this creek that we’ve ever seen in 15-20 years. And then this spring we went back again and we’re finding new insects that have never been seen there before.”

But if you quickly search the 2014 edition of the impaired waters list, you'll see Malletts Creek is still on it -- and that’s after more than a decade and millions of dollars spent.

Malletts Creek, like Kids Creek, is suffering from heavy runoff and flooding. That’s more difficult to stop compared to – say – a factory that’s dumping chemicals into water in one specific area. Even so, Joe Rathbun at the state Department of Environmental Quality predicts Kids Creek will one day be removed from the list.

Credit David Cassleman

“Kids Creek has a lot of things going for it," Rathbun says. "It has a good aquatic insect and fish population in certain portions of the watershed. And so when we get conditions right elsewhere in the degraded parts, that will rapidly recover.”

The Watershed Center says it plans to work project-by-project until Kids Creek is no longer impaired. The group just got a $600,000 grant from the state to expand work on the stream.

But the day when Kids Creek is off the list could be years – maybe decades – ahead.

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