The Log | School News

Restored Duke Forest Creek Showing Signs of Recovery

Three years after undergoing a massive restoration, a once heavily eroded and polluted 14-acre stretch of wetlands along a Durham creek is showing signs of renewed health and helping to reduce nitrate pollution in the Triangle’s drinking water supply.

“The changes we’re observing—not only in the restored streamwetland- lake complex itself but also in water quality downstream from it—are extremely encouraging,” said Curtis J.Richardson, director of the Duke University Wetland Center and professor of resource ecology at the Nicholas School.

Duke University officials dedicated the Stream and Wetland Assessment Management Park (SWAMP) in May.SWAMP is located along a stretch of Sandy Creek in Duke Forest, near the Al Buehler Cross Country Trail and just a stone’s throw across N.C. 751 from Duke’s West Campus.

The site is designed to help protect the Triangle’s drinking water supply by controlling contaminant-laden storm runoff from Duke’s campus and 1,200 surrounding acres of Durham. It also functions as an outdoor teaching and research laboratory for undergraduate and graduate students in environmental studies and engineering.

Scientists and students at the Duke University Wetland Center have worked for more than three years on the first three phases of the restoration.They have re-contoured and replanted Sandy Creek’s formerly silt-clogged streambed and banks, restored a riparian wetland along the floodplain, built a wetland and built a new storm water reservoir and earthen dam to replace an old dam.

Storm runoff containing heavy concentrations of sediment, nitrogen, phosphorus and other urban pollutants drains into Sandy Creek.The stream is a tributary of New Hope Creek,which meets state pollution standards when it enters northern Durham County,but often has been in violation by the time it left southern Durham County bound for Jordan Lake, part of the Triangle’s drinking water supply.

Tests conducted prior to SWAMP’s restoration and one year after its completion show that nitrate pollution downstream has been reduced substantially, Richardson said.

“Rapid declines in nitrate concentrations between testing stations immediately above and below the site suggest significant ecosystem metabolism is taking place within the restored streamwetland complex,”he said.“It is once again functioning as a wetland should.”