(Photo Credit: EOR Inc.)

The Shoreview, Minnesota Rice Creek Meander Project, the largest stream restoration project in the Midwest when it was completed in 2006, is redefining the way hydrologists look at watercourses. 

In the earliest part of the last century, a river didn’t merely run, it meandered, cutting across farm fields, roads and homesteads. Then, in the 1930s, after the Army Corps of Engineers took over management of the Mississippi River in the wake of the 1936 Flood Control Act, hydrologists decided that straightening the courses of rivers and streams improved water flow, provided more arable land for crops, and lessened the chance of flooding, largely because a fast-moving river doesn’t have a chance to back up and inundate surrounding land. 

They were wrong, and rivers once artificially straightened by dredging and damming are now being restored, from Denmark to Minnesota, thanks to new findings that show meandering streams not only create backwaters that deliver vital habitat for aquatic and other wildlife, but preserve wetlands, prevent bank erosion and flooding, and improve water quality. 

One such project, along a nearly one-mile stretch of Rice Creek in a public park in a suburb of the Twin Cities, has been so cleverly restored that first-time visitors, including fishermen and bird watchers, have trouble believing it is a restoration rather than a natural evolution.   

Visitors to this urban stretch of Rice Creek get a first-hand look at pre-agrarian stream ecosystems in Central Minnesota, complete with frogs, salamanders, bull snakes, silver maple, willow and prairie grasses. Fish include large and smallmouth bass, sunfish (commonly called bluegills), and crappies. Muskrats are a dime a dozen, and someday wood turtles may return. 

(Photo Credit: EOR Inc.)

In 2010, the project and its engineering design firm, Emmons and Olivier Resources, a stream restoration specialist, won the distinguished Engineering Excellence Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), the nation’s largest organization of consulting engineers. The ACEC operates across 51 states, represents 3,000 engineering and design professionals, and is responsible for more than $100 billion in private and public projects each year. The award was one of 163 given around the globe. 

For the Rice Creek Watershed District, the project represented an opportunity to reconnect Rice Creek with its historic floodplain. It also provided a chance to improve water quality and extend habitat by creating a series of river scenarios, from semi-static pools to sections of water running rapidly over rocky streambeds – the latter nature’s way of purifying water. 

The restoration not only slowed down bank erosion and provided superior spawning grounds for fish, but the filling in of a former drainage ditch allowed water to again infiltrate five acres of former wetlands to provide summer nesting grounds for ducks and Canada geese, and habitat for other aquatic animals on a year-round basis. 

It was one of the largest stream restoration projects in the Midwest. According to Kevin Biehn, lead engineer at Emmons & Olivier – which was itself district engineer for the Rice Creek Watershed District – the project was well ahead of its time. 

“For the time we spent, and the planning involved, I would have to say the project was quite successful. In fact, the project is now looked upon as a precedent-setting example of how to tackle a stream restoration project of this size and scope.

(Photo Credit: EOR Inc.)

In addition, the higher, post-construction environmental scores, in terms of mollusk counts for example, as compared to pre-construction, show that the dollars were well spent.”

For Matthew Kocian, a lake and stream specialist with the Rice Creek Watershed District, the project represents a milestone in habitat restoration. 

Though he was not with the District when the project was completed, Kocian says that the tools the District used to evaluate the project show a vast improvement in water quality, particularly as it relates to sediment. This in turn led to improved spawning and fish habitat. 

“For example, we are seeing a rise in what we call ‘sensitive’ fish species. These include yellow perch, catfish, spotfin shiner and other shiner species, and largemouth bass.”

All in all, the project was so successful, says Kocian, that plans are underway for more stream restorations, awaiting only grant funding to begin.