We have treated streams badly for a long time. We have dammed them and polluted them and cut trees along them.
At a Virginia Commonwealth University research station in Charles City County, experts are turning back the clock. In a $1 million project, they are restoring historic Kimages Creek and 70 acres of neighboring wetlands.
The creek was dammed in the 1920s to create Lake Charles — a place for shooting ducks. In December, workers opened the dam, allowing migratory fish and other creatures to move up the stream again.
"It's as if we've taken away 80 years of history," said Greg Garman, director of VCU's Center for Environmental Studies.
Scientists, conservationists and dignitaries gathered Wednesday to dedicate the project at VCU's Rice Center, nearly 500 wild acres about 20 miles southeast of Richmond.
"There is a nationwide effort to remove unnecessary dams and, as beautiful as Lake Charles was, this was a dam that environmentally really shouldn't have been there," said Leonard A. Smock, the Rice Center's director.
As Smock spoke on a bluff above Kimages Creek, a stilt-legged bird called a killdeer cried "k'dee-dee-dee" by the water, which ran at low tide past mud flats and cattails.
Major beneficiaries of the project will be two species of fish that are collectively called river herring. They were once common and, just a couple of decades ago, salt herring was a popular breakfast treat in eastern Virginia.
But dams, pollution and other challenges have devastated the fish.
The 200-foot opening carved in the 800-foot Kimages Creek dam, just north of the James River, will restore territory for the herring to spawn.
Also, the creek is closer to resembling the way it looked when troops under Union Gen. George McClellan dug in on its east side during the Peninsula Campaign in 1862.
Scientists and graduate students will put in cypress trees and other plants in the areas along the creek that were previously under the lake. Other wetland plants, such as arrow arum, should come back as their seeds ride in with the tide.
"This is one of the more significant stream- and wetland-restoration projects on the East Coast. … This is a big project," said Smock.
Most of the money for the project comes from the Virginia Aquatic Resources Trust Fund, a program of state and federal agencies and The Nature Conservancy, an environmental group.
Developers who destroy wetlands are typically required to create wetlands elsewhere. Or they can pay into a program such as the trust fund. Once derided as buggy swamps, wetlands are valued today because they cleanse waters and provide places for young fish to hide.
Some created wetlands are more successful than others. With money from the fund, VCU will monitor the success of the Kimages project.
Among those attending the dedication was Inger Rice, who donated more than 340 acres to create the Rice Center in 2000.
The Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries are being killed by a thousand cuts. Experts said the Kimages Creek project would heal one of those wounds.
"I think this is a microcosm of Chesapeake Bay protection," said Michael L. Lipford, The Nature Conservancy's Virginia director. "Given a chance, nature is pretty resilient."
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