By Stephen Smoot
Martha Shimkin, the director of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program Office came in person to the banks of the North Fork at Seneca Rocks to discuss small watershed and other grants.
More than $24 million went to 57 “on-the-ground community-based projects in West Virginia and across the watershed,” an EPA release stated.
Shimkin opened the event by thanking “a really good group of good partners,” as well as the financial support of the United States Congress.
She noted that “West Virginia has accomplished a lot.” Shimkin then explained how the Chesapeake Bay program’s member states all had “water quality goals” and “specific outcome levels.” West Virginia has consistently met those mandates over the past several years and is “the state on track to meet these goals.”
Goals depend on each state’s unique environmental circumstances so as to evaluate fairly. West Virginia remains on track to meet the 2025 benchmarks.
What Shimkin did not include is that West Virginia relies on voluntary programs, education, and incentives, as opposed to punitive and punishing laws originally suggested by the EPA to member states decades ago. The Mountain State was the only one to ignore EPA advice and adopt the collaborative, rather than the regulatory, model.
Dustin Wichterman, associate director of the Mid Atlantic Coldwater Habitat Program, rose next to speak. He praised organizations and workers involved for “hundreds of miles of restorative work” to fish habitats. That includes careful construction of brook trout habitats along the North Fork.
“Fix the habitat and the fish will take care of themselves,” Wichterman told the group.
One of the major results included one of the largest brook trout habitats south of Maine. Brook trout prefer colder waters, although a population living in a warm central Maryland river was recently discovered.
The American eel also relies on the headwaters of the South Branch system as part of its reproductive cycle that extends from Seneca Rocks to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Restoring the habitats, Wichterman and other officials present said, brings back tourism draws such as brook trout, but also creates an economy centered around the maintenance of the habitats.
After the presentation, which included federal and state officials, attendees toured in-progress and completed restoration sites on the North Fork River and Seneca Creek.
West Virginia joined the Chesapeake Bay group of states during Cecil Underwood’s second gubernatorial administration. Since the 1990s, work on improving water quality has helped to restore natural wildlife habitats for iconic animals such as the blue crab. Work in West Virginia has focused on improving water and sewer systems, encouraging farmers to use fencing to keep cattle from direct contact with streams, and reducing poultry litter use to more precise levels for agricultural use.
