Hurt & Proffitt, Inc. has always known that it’s cool to be ‘green’ and that view is running rampant focusing on water quality in the City of Lynchburg, Campbell County, and Bedford County. The James River Association (JRA), a non-profit organization and “the voice’ of the James, has been working for almost a year on what is known as the Extreme Stream Makeover that occurred in the Blackwater Creek watershed. Streams in the City of Lynchburg, Bedford County, and Campbell County are located within the Blackwater Creek watershed that ultimately drains to the James River. Representative from each respective jurisdiction have been asked to head projects to help promote awareness of how what we do upstream CAN make a difference in the overall water quality of the James.
Home base for the week long Extreme Stream event was located in the Wards Crossing shopping center. Representatives from Hurt & Proffitt, Inc., Lauren Bifulco, and Tiffany Clifton volunteered on October 22, 2009. The project for that day was to install wetland plants between the inlet and the outlet structures of the existing stormwater detention facility located at the corner of Atlanta Avenue and the entrance to the Wards Crossing Shopping Center at Barnes and Noble. The premise of this project is to incorporate wetland vegetation that would uptake pollutants (such as hydrocarbons and heavy metals), and nutrients (such as phosphorus and nitrogen), filtering the stormwater prior to discharging into Burton Creek. Plants that were installed included soft rush, iron weed, sedges, red maples, joe-pye weed, red osier dogwood, etc.
We had the pleasure of meeting Bill Street, the Executive Director for the JRA and Michele Kokolis, Watershed Scientist for the JRA who were heading the project. Mr Street saw our H&P t-shirts and made a formal introduction to us, and continuing to tell us that our past employee, now Secretary of Natural Resources, Preston Bryant, had been there on Tuesday, with Governor Kaine and members of his cabinet, installing plants for the rain garden project at Peaks View Park. Additional team members for the Thursday project included Erin Hawkins, Kent White, and Jake Dorman from the City of Lynchburg, Paula Nash, TMDL Specialist with the Blue Ridge Regional Office (Timberlake) of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, Brian Stokes with Campbell County, Pat Fitzsimmons, Coordinator for the Central Virginia Water Quality Center, Lynchburg College and also a sub-consultant for the JRA, 10 + volunteers from the Honey Well Corporation out of Richmond, VA, employees from the DCR Center for Watershed Protection, employees from RSG Landscaping, and several local citizens.
Other projects for that week included, buffer plantings along the stream bank and a rain garden at Peaks View Park, stream bank restoration project at Wards Crossing West, and a Bayscape project at Jefferson Forest High School.
Michele Kokolis stated that she had such an overwhelmingly positive response for this area that she would like to bring more projects back to Lynchburg, Campbell, and Bedford County next year.