Stabilized Fording Sites
Since crop and pasture lands often straddle watercourses, providing safe crossings for livestock and equipment with reduced potential for negative water quality effects is critical. Additionally, watering livestock at rivers is often the only practical option for agricultural producers. The KWRC has used stable fording sites as both watering locations for livestock as well as crossings for farm equipment. The approaches are properly aligned and hardened, and the stream bottom is stabilized with hard rock to prevent erosion and rutting. Since 1994 the KWRC has installed 85 stabilized fording sites in the watershed.
Kennebecasis Watershed Restoration Committee
Worth Wading Into
Rock Groynes
Groynes are often thought of as one end of a rock sill. Deflecting or repelling groynes are often used to push water away from severely eroding banks. Sediment often builds up between the groynes where a succession of grasses, bushes and eventually trees grow. Groynes are often installed as part of a bank stabilization effort to further increase fish habitat while controlling stream flow direction and velocity. They are designed to slow the flow of water and reudce the risk of sending an erosion problem downstream. The KWRC and our partners have been able to install 57 rock groyne structures throughout our watershed (2017).
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Benefits of Groynes:
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1. Control flow direction and velocity on hardemed stream banks to reduce risk of downstream erosion.
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2. Increase fish habitat.
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3. Increase stream channel stability.
Looking down on a rock groyne installed on McNair Brook.