Senior design team works to restore Wythe County stream

A lot of ag landowners in Southwest Virginia, year after year, flood after flood, they're watching their ag lands just get eroded away. We are out here along Cripple Creek. About a year ago, Hurricane Helene came through here and hit Southwest Virginia pretty hard. And now it's caused some of the stream banks to erode. And so the Forest Service wants to do a project to stabilize this side of the stream. And we just thought that this would be a good project tackle with BSC senior design group. What me and Hunter are working on are taking cross-sectional profiles and a longitudinal profile so we're just like getting the shape of the stream bank and then Chloe and Stella are getting edge of water and edge of vegetation so that's getting more of the landscape. Got it. Next step is to plug that into a HECRAS model so we know how much water we have to account for when we design a new bank for the stream. For this stretch right here we're probably going to grade it and then add vegetation to stabilize it so like deep-rooted trees like a walnut or a willow tree that will hopefully prevent more erosion in the future. If I have a stream restoration project or a bank stabilization project this is all the stuff that we would be doing not only seeing the methods that we do it but they're also getting to use the tools. The students graduate and they go work for a consulting firm they're probably going to use the same Trimble or Topcon surveying equipment that we got out here today. It's a win for the students to get the experience of like this is how an industry project goes and it's a win for the university that their student groups are doing so well but then it's also a win for Trout Unlimited and the Forest Service because we're getting projects in the ground and we're getting stuff done. They're not doing designs that go sit on a shelf somewhere like we're We're actually getting designs that are going to construction and we're actually doing the projects.