Jeff Hawkes
On his knees last Thursday evening pulling velvetleaf, galinsoga and other weeds in a meadow at Oregon Dairy, 77-year-old Mark Strassle said he could have been watching TV.
But close to the patch of scrubby, knee-high vegetation where Strassle and other volunteers were working flowed Kurtz Run.
Emerging from springs three or four miles from where Strassle labored, Kurtz Run was making its way in no particular hurry to a bend in the Conestoga.
The Conestoga drains almost a quarter of intensively farmed Lancaster County, and its nitrogen- and sediment-bearing waters build to more than 600 cubic feet per second before spilling into the serene Susquehanna.
The mile-wide waters of the Susquehanna, meanwhile, roll to the river's terminus: the Chesapeake Bay.
And the 200-mile-long estuary, a scenic wonder of profligate biodiversity, is the repository for all that flows downstream. For too long that has meant fish-killing runoff from farms and development and discharges from industry and sewage plants.
Demonstration site
Strassle passed on TV last Thursday and instead pulled weeds because he wants to be part of the solution.
"What drives me, really, is I like clean water," said Strassle, a kayaker. "I think it's a shame how we treat our river. I mean, it revolts me."
In May, more than 80 people responded to Chesapeake Bay Foundation's call for volunteers. Along a streamside patch near Oregon Dairy's south entrance, they planted red maple and eastern redbud trees and wildflowers such as brown-eyed susan and bluestem goldenrod.
The goal was to establish a buffer to absorb runoff and demonstrate to the thousands who visit the dairy the power of thick vegetation along waterways to put nature back in balance.
Nature, however, can be a contrary force, judging by the riot of weeds threatening to choke out the May plantings.
"It looks pretty hairy right now," the foundation's Monty Garber said in welcoming 23 volunteers, almost half from Boy Scout Troop 76 of New Providence.
Garber pointed out ferny-leafed coreopsis as one of the perennials thriving since the May planting. "But the bad news," he said, "is a lot of the weeds are doing quite well, too."
Roland Yoder, a retired teacher from nearby Landis Homes retirement community, was undeterred. "I'm all for beautifying roadsides and streamsides," he said as he worked.
Branching out
A streamside buffer of shrubs and wildflowers takes maintenance to establish. A better solution is a buffer of big trees, ideally in rows 100 feet wide on both banks.
Because of a sewer line right-of-way, a forested buffer was ruled out near Oregon Dairy's entrance, but not upstream. That's where two rows of saplings are growing in protective tubes — more than 400 trees in all. The stand, in time, will be a two-acre woods. "They're going to provide a lot of shade for the stream," Oregon Dairy's George Hurst said.
There's no silver bullet for restoring water quality in streams and the distant bay, Garber said. But studies show that fencing out cows and planting forested buffers delivers a big bang for the buck.
Tree roots stabilize banks and soak up runoff. Water-cooling shade fosters fish populations. Leaves in the water feed bacteria that metabolize nitrogen.
With 60 percent of the county's 1,400 miles of streams deemed impaired, we could use hundreds of thousands of streamside trees.
"But getting any kind of good native vegetation is certainly better than grass," Garber said. Even if it means pulling weeds.
