Northeast Region Restoration & Education
The N.C. Coastal Federation works with numerous partners to link coastal habitat restoration with environmental education in the Northeast Region. The federation’s education program engages students and adults in projects to protect water quality and restore important coastal habitats. Our program strives to provide opportunities for individuals to take an active role in the stewardship of our coastal waters and habitats. Learn more.
Current Projects
Plan will Help Restore Hydrology on Hyde Farms and Protect Water
In moves that bode well for the health of the northern Pamlico Sound, the state’s Division of Water Quality has awarded a grant to the Northeast Region to write a Watershed Restoration Plan for a farm drainage district in northeast Hyde County, and the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund has ponied up money to restore the hydrology on 1,400 acres of ditched and drained farm land.
Regional staff members have started working with local stakeholders and engineers from N.C. State University to identify potential restoration projects in the 42,500-acre Mattamuskeet Drainage District, which discharges stormwater to Pamlico Sound and the Intracoastal Waterway through major canals.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provided grant money for the watershed restoration plan. Money is funneled to state governments for projects that improve water quality in pollution-impaired creeks, rivers and sounds. In most cases the pollution is caused by bacterial contamination from runoff.
Tannic-colored water flows from a canal in south Hyde County.
The plan will build on several years of restoration work by the federation in mainland Hyde and Dare counties, which comprise the broad thumb known as the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula.
In 2004 federation staff members began working with a group of scientists and conservationists to identify potential sites for oyster restoration in northern waters. The group found numerous sites off Hyde County, which once had a thriving oyster industry. But the sites were being affected by plumes of tannic water from canals.
Staff members then contacted a group of local farmers and landholders to locate areas where land-based restoration projects might reduce water flowing from the canals. Lux Farms in northeast Hyde was pinpointed as having tremendous potential for hydrologic restoration. The Mary Flagler Carey Charitable Trust funded this work.
The N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund provided a grant to design a 4,200-acre restoration project on Lux Farms, which contained several low areas where runoff could be held in ponds for irrigation. “It’s a great collaboration,” said Jan DeBlieu, the regional coastal advocate, “because we’re hoping to reduce runoff and the farmers need extra water for their crops. This serves everyone’s interests.”
Planning for the restoration project was delayed by state funding problems. But last fall, the federation received the go-ahead to complete it—along with approval of a grant to build the first phase on 1,400 acres.
In 2009 a separate project was completed on Mattamuskeet Ventures Farm, just to the west. Using money from a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Partners in Conservation grant, Coastal Scientist Erin Fleckenstein directed the restoration of 600 acres, in which extra rainwater is held at controlled levels to create the most optimum habitat for migrating shorebirds.
Together the projects will significantly reduce the stormwater output from the canals. But there are other potential sites for installing water management features to restore the land’s natural hydrology. The goal of the Watershed Restoration Plan is to identify them and rank them by their importance to reducing bacteria in local waters.
The first step was to form a stakeholders group with landowners, engineers, and partners from resource agencies like the federal Natural Conservation Resource Service. The group held their first meeting January 20. Because water movement is carefully controlled by pumps, the drainage district functions as a watershed. A tool known as DrainMod, developed at N.C. State, will be used to track water flow within the drainage district. Water quality sampling will help locate pollution hot spots.
After the initial analysis, potential hydrologic restoration projects will be identified and ranked according to how much pollution they can remove from the waters, the cost of installation, and the ease with which they can be installed.
The Watershed Restoration Plan will enable the federation and its partners to more effectively find funding for building the restoration projects, DeBlieu said. “If you’ve got a plan that shows you’ve carefully looked at the whole picture, you’re more likely to score higher on grant applications,” she said.
The plan is scheduled to be completed by the middle of 2012.
Rain Garden at Manteo Middle School: Students at Manteo Middle School monitor a rain garden, one of two that the Northeast Region staff and several partner organizations planted at the school in 2006. The gardens have since become beloved school features, used by science and art classes. Last summer a boardwalk was constructed across the largest garden, using a grant provided by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Partners in Conservation program. The grant also provided money to replant areas of the gardens. The new plantings were designed by Katherine Mitchell, horticulturist at the N.C. Aquarium on Roanoke Island, and installed with the help of students and adult volunteers.
Staff to Provide Stormwater Plan for Three Schools
The Dare County School District has received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency’s 319 pollution control program to reduce runoff from the First Flight elementary, middle, and high schools in Kill Devil Hills. And the district has hired Northeast Region staff to help.
Over the next several months staff members will be looking for potential stormwater-treatment sites at the three campuses, which are underlain with pipes and ditches that drain to the ocean and Roanoke Sound. When the sites for rain gardens, wetlands, and cisterns and other techniques are identified, the district’s engineer will help determine how much water each feature could hold. The suggested methods will then be ranked according to their effectiveness, cost and the ease with which they can be installed.
Robert McClendon, a landscape architect with the University of North Carolina’s Coastal Studies Institute, will also help develop the plan.
The project is a perfect fit for the federation, since staff members are already working with teachers at the middle school on a planned rain garden, funded through the EPA’s Five Star community restoration grant program. A second rain garden, funded by WalMart, will also be built this spring at a Dare County school, most likely First Flight High.
“The stormwater master plan will help us decide which practices should be built first,” said Sara Hallas, the federation’s regional education coordinator. “We’re also hoping that having a careful plan in place will help us attract more funding so we can get these BMPs in the ground.”
As with all federation restoration projects, installation of the stormwater-control measures will have a strong education component. They will be planted by students, and Hallas will give classroom lessons on the need to reduce runoff to protect nearby waterways.
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