Rosalyn Lehman, executive director of Iowa Rivers Revival, is our guest blogger.
She offers solutions to restoring stream banks on Iowa’s rivers and streams.
Watch her Oct. 21 webinar live at 1 p.m. by logging on at: https://connect.extension.iastate.edu/ilf/
You can watch the recorded webinar after Oct. 21 by clicking the link
on the ILF webinar archive page.
How can I fix my eroding streambank?
Protecting the condition of Iowa’s soil and streams are essential for a thriving economy, healthy environment, and quality of life experiences. Natural river restoration practices are an affordable and practical solution for addressing streambank erosion across Iowa.
Eroding streambanks can mean the loss of crop buffer areas, productive farmland, and local infrastructure (i.e. bridges, roads, trails), as well as a major contributor of sediment and nutrients to our water. Standard engineering practices for keeping streambanks in place often calls for extensive armoring using riprap revetments or other expensive approaches with questionable long-term results. “Softscape” restoration approaches can enhance streambank stability at a fraction of the cost. Understanding river dynamics can lead to much more cost-effective, sustainable, and natural results while protecting land and infrastructure, improving water quality, reducing flood effects and enhancing fish and wildlife.
Natural river restoration is complex and starts with asking what a river would do naturally. Iowa Rivers Revival advocates for an Iowa River Restoration Program that would provide guidelines, criteria, cost-share, training, and the expertise necessary for protecting Iowa’s landscape, streambanks and river ways. Currently, Iowa lacks these resources to offer natural river restoration opportunities to landowners and communities across the state.
Natural river restoration provides many benefits to landowners and the surrounding community. It:
- Offers affordable and sustainable options to reduce streambank erosion.
- Keeps productive cropland and stream buffers in place.
- Protects local infrastructure such as bridges and roads from erosion and flooding, and reduces taxpayer expense to repair, replace and maintain.
- Improves water quality by reducing sediment and nutrient loads into the stream.
- Reduces flooding and flood effects.
- Enhances aquatic and riparian wildlife habitat and ecosystem.
- Improves river recreation, fishing, and hunting – boosting local economies and providing public health and quality of life.
Streambank before “softscape” restoration.
The same streambank after restoration.
Iowa Rivers Revival is a non-profit, statewide organization dedicated to river education and advocacy. IRR is working with Iowa’s towns, policy leaders and river lovers to restore our waterways as beautiful, safe places to for residents and visitors to enjoy, work and recreate.
Helpful links:
River restoration background: http://iowarivers.org/legislative/river-restoration/
River restoration fact sheet: http://iowarivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/River-Restoration-web.pdf
River basics fact sheet: http://iowarivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/IRR_River-Basics-web.pdf
Des Moines Register op-ed (March 1, 2013): A Call to Iowa to Revive Our Rivers
Contact: Rosalyn Lehman, executive director, Iowa Rivers Revival, rlehman@iowarivers.org; 515.724.4093
Iowa Learning Farms 