Kids' Fishing Day

It's nice to see kids making sure to get their parents outside now and then.  Today, I helped out with a kids' fishing day, put on in collaboration between the Northern Virginia chapter of Trout Unlimited, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF), Reston Association, and Wetland Studies (the company I work for).  Yesterday, DGIF stocked about four hundred 8"-18" rainbow trout in Snakeden Branch, one of the streams we restored in Reston a couple of years ago.  Today, about 50 of those trout came back out at the hands of almost 200 kids between 2 and 8 years old.  (Okay, their parents helped a little bit, too.)

What a blast.  Some of the kids had never seen a trout before, let alone caught or held one.  They were fascinated as Sarah and Beth (our two fish-gutting mavens for the day) showed them how to clean fish, taught them the males from the females, and let them get up close and personal with the leftover fish heads.  Even the girls got into it, which was great to see.  (I do think it helped that we had two ladies at the cleaning station. You can't go wrong with positive role models!)

Kids, keep getting your parents outside. It's good for them.

Mild-mannered alter ego

With just about two weeks to go before the Great Migration, my alter ego has been hard at work doing a bunch of stuff that isn't related to Camp at all.  While my official title at Wetland Studies is Associate Engineer, my unofficial title is Easily Distracted.  I do a little bit of everything.  My main job (currently) is design of sustainable stormwater facilities: rain gardens, pervious pavement, and other things that make the urban jungle more closely mimic the hydrology of a forest.  Right now, I'm also learning the exciting new world of project management by leading our team on a large sustainable stormwater contract for DC's water authority.

My secondary jobs, however, are many and varied, just like they are at Red River.  Currently, the most exciting one is that I've been primarily responsible for the design and content of Wetland Studies' new website, which went live last night.  I have several edits to make over the next couple of days, but we're all very excited to finally see it up and running.  My next "art project" will be to modify our Reston Stream Restoration project site to match the new site format and to finish up some new marketing materials we've been working on.  Throw some soil testing, regulatory meetings, tour guiding, and actual design work into the mix, and I keep myself pretty busy.  (There's a reason these posts typically come out between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning!)

On the Red River side of things, our new shirts came this week.  I had them delivered to Maine, so I haven't actually seen them yet, just pictures.  The red ink looks quite a bit brighter than I was hoping for, but I think they'll do.  I have two other designs to print, and I'm currently looking into fleeces or sweatshirts as well. 

I'm getting some new quilts for the double beds and some new sundries for the dining room- I'll post pictures once I make a final decision.  And finally, the generator is currently out town being serviced, so I'm making arrangements for that to be completed in the next couple of weeks so we can have power while the solar system is being installed.

Those are the big items; all in all, it's just another day!

Talking Shop

I'm spending the next few nights at the B&B at Llewellyn Lodge in Lexington, Virginia, where some of my WSSI co-workers and I are attending the Environment Virginia conference to keep abreast of the latest regulatory changes and updates affecting the environmental industry. Our B&B host, John Roberts, is a fishing guide; I'm looking forward to talking a little shop this week!

As an aside, the B&B keeps a good selection of reading material for the guests...  Even though I grew up in a hunting camp, I never in my wildest dreams imagined a magazine titled Garden & Gun.  I don't know why, but the name strikes me as riotously funny.  It'll be a fun read this evening after twelve hours of hobnobbing with folks at the conference.

Another Stream Video

A friend posted this video the other day; since I have both a personal and a professional connection to streams, rivers, and ecology, I wanted to pass it along.  (As a side note, I've been to the Deschutes River in Oregon, whose picture flashes during the video's first 30 seconds, as part of a stream restoration class.  The section I visited was still flowing.)





Water rights are a huge issue throughout the world; we're lucky in Northern Maine.  Even through a very dry summer, all we at Red River had to worry about was waiting for the rain to catch back up with the rate of evaporation.  Can you imagine not being able to fish some of the best trout waters in the West because the streams are completely dry?

Mild-Mannered Alter Ego

I frequently get asked what my winter job entails.  The long version is that I'm a civil engineer who focuses on wetland and stream restoration and sustainable stormwater.  Even though I've mainly focused on stormwater for the past year, my short answer is always, "I build swamps and rivers."  Just for fun, try telling someone that sometime and watch the range of emotions on their face: confusion, curiosity, disbelief, interest...

To get a quick idea of what I mean by building swamps and rivers, take a gander at this video of a gentleman kayaking down one of our restored streams in Reston, Virginia, last week.  This is what we build.

This section of stream is only a few months old, so the plants haven't yet had a chance to come up.  Even the mature trees down here are thinking about leafing out, but they haven't quite started yet.  Hopefully he'll make another trip when summer is in full swing.  For comparison, here are a couple of photos showing what we start with: steep, deep gullies, some of which don't even have water unless it's just rained.

In conjunction with Trout Unlimited, we're also hosting a fishing day for the local schoolkids later this spring in another restored Reston stream.  It'll be fun and educational; northern Virginia isn't a place where kids get a lot of exposure to the outdoors, let alone rainbow trout.

Frontline: Poisoned Waters

I’ll start with this disclaimer. My alter ego is a stream and wetland restoration engineer in Virginia. (I guess that would make this ego the mild-mannered reporter.) As such, I’m very focused on the problems plaguing the Chesapeake Bay, water quality, and the environment in general. I also think everyone has the responsibility to, if not actively focus on these issues, at least be well-aware of them. Why? Because every individual thing we do to impact water has a cumulative effect on our whole society. Only air pollution trumps water pollution in its ability to spread so far and impact so many people and ecosystems.

Therefore, I would recommend everyone take some time and watch the Poinsoned Waters documentary. You can access it at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/poisonedwaters/. It’s broken up into thirteen chapters, each about 10 minutes long, so you don’t need a two-hour block of time.

I can only watch it between 2AM and 7AM due to our satellite connection, so I started with the last four chapters, which focused on Puget Sound in Oregon and Tysons Corner and Arlington in Virginia (right near where I work). Commentary to come later; for now, I need to change into my bright-red alter-ego cape and get some work done.