Ausable River Association's Project Area 2 nears completion

JAY | Project Area 2 of Ausable River Association's East Branch Restoration Plan, a project repairing sections of the Ausable River, is about two weeks from completion. The flood Oct. 7 delayed the contractors, who have been working weekends to complete the project area, but it is still expected to be completed close to schedule. Historically, this watershed has gone through a lot. From the 1800s to 1923, logging drives, a way of transporting logs from forests to sawmills, went down the east branch of the Ausable River. This contributed to the deforestation of the watershed, which changed how runoff moved through it. Then, there was gravel mining in the river until the late 1970s. Before the Ausable River Association began working on its restoration plan, many areas of the river were too wide, which caused the river to accumulate sediment, which pushed water onto the banks and caused more erosion. "The process was a sort of self-perpetuating cycle," Gary Henry, stream restoration manager for Ausable River Association, said. Henry said that if this kind of erosion happened to a river in the middle of the woods, it could probably be left alone to work out the kinks over a few centuries. However, the Ausable River is near homes businesses and Route 9N, the main transportation artery in the area. "The river doesn't have the space to make its own adjustments," Henry said. "So in that case, we come in and we do a few things to sort of bring that back to the appropriate width that allows it to move sediment, break up ice jams more effectively, and then in the process we also create habitat for brook trout and the food web that supports them." Contractors have been working on placing large boulders and a toe wood bench, made of locally sourced native trees, to shift the river away from 9N. "The way those are constructed, based on the modeling that was done, it should be able to handle what they call the shear stresses, the forces that the flood moving through that channel would place on the banks," Henry said. "So we expect that the river should be able to withstand floods of varying sizes." Project Area 2 is one of 13 project areas identified in the East Branch Restoration Plan, which was formed in 2019. The east branch of the Ausable River is the section that flows through the town of Jay. Each problem area is numbered sequentially moving downstream and will be completed in order of urgency. Area 3 has already been completed.

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Ausable River Association's Project Area 2 nears completion

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