Residents clean up local creek

By BEN BLANKENSHIP
For the Stafford County Sun
Published: June 19, 2008

AQUIA — More than 20 Aquia Harbour residents gathered beside Aquia Creek and voluntarily worked most of the day Saturday to remove trees, logs and other debris from the waters upstream from the community’s vehicle bridge.

“This action will help minimize the risk of flooding and bank erosion for our residents who live alongside Aquia Creek,” said the project’s manager, David Humphrey. He, along with two other members of the community’s board of directors, participated in the cleanup effort along with the recruited residents.

At day’s end much progress was made, all agreed. But much more effort was still needed to complete the task. Further upstream from their work sites there remained several major downed trees, some with trunk diameters as large as four or five feet.

Humphrey said those also should be removed. Not only would that free up more of the shallow creek area for use by kayakers, canoeists, and fishermen, it also would remove the danger of trees being washed downstream by a major storm and thus endangering the vehicle bridge’s safety — a major concern.

Many residents of the community’s sections upstream from the bridge depend on it for regular commuting and commerce to and from Aquia Harbour’s main gate, east from Garrisonville Road where it intersects U.S. 1 in Stafford.

One resident, Maria Morrison, helped workers create waterfront limb and log barriers to creek erosion behind her neighbors’ creekside back yards.

From using ropes to free submerged limbs to chain-sawing larger trunks to piece them up for removal from the creek by hand, it was a combined effort that produced the desired results. Humphrey admitted, however, that some of the remaining large impediments might require a crane or other industrial equipment to complete the task, in addition to the volunteer labor, of course.

Ben Blankenship is a contributing writer at the Stafford County Sun. Reach him at .