FARMINGTON – The final step of the massive project to stabilize the river embankment below Whittier Road has been successfully completed, but not exactly as planned.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency grant awarded for the project requires that the bank to be successfully re-vegetated for long-term erosion control along the Sandy River.
The bank stabilization project’s aim is to protect Whittier Road from collapse after a string of weather events, including remnants of a hurricane, caused severe erosion to occur along the river’s bank near the road.
Last spring, in the final phase of the project, volunteers including Foster CTE Center’s forestry program students, town employees and community members, planted hundreds of juniper, alder and dogwood seedlings along the embankment, then town employees worked to keep the bank’s seedlings watered through the summer.
This season, Pete Tracy, of the Farmington Conservation Commission, checked on the heath of the seedlings after a year of growth and found the survival rate to not be “real good,” said Town Manager Richard Davis.
Last year’s work was the second attempt to get seedlings to establish along the bank.
In the fall of 2014, once the bank armoring construction phase, which included embedding layers of huge pilings, tree trunks and rocks up the side of the steep embankment, was completed, seedlings were planted by town employees. But the majority of those did not survive through the winter. Then came last year’s second attempt with 380 seedlings planted and this season’s disappointing survival report of the normally hardy species.
Yet, today the embankment supports a healthy green growth. The brown and gray of the complicated, criss-crossing timbers, installed tree roots and carpet of stabilizing burlap have mostly disappeared.
It turns out the non-native invasive species, Japanese knotweed, can take some of the credit for the bank’s future erosion control. The bamboo-like herbaceous plant with its aggressively fast-growing root system has allowed for the successful completion of the FEMA grant requirements to establish vegetation, Davis said. He termed the knotweed taking root on the bank as a “volunteer species.”
The bank stabilization project, the first of its kind to be built in Maine, totaled $452,000 and was funded in large part by FEMA.
Sometimes you just get lucky ! I have weeds in my garden that I think could help !
Where did the Japanese knotwood come from? Is it established in the area?
Sounds like “good news-bad news” all rolled into one.
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/07/11/japanese-knotweed-driving-men-murder-257257.html
If that is,indeed Japanese knotweed,that’s almost as exciting as having it covered in bittersweet , NOT . Because it is near water,eradicating it will be prohibited. Oh , the convoluted webs we weave.
Isn’t ironic that the original plan called for rugosa roses to be planted but the plan was rejected because they are invasive. Now we have bamboo growing there instead.