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We did it! Thanks to your donations, both large and small, we met the fall donor drive challenge, raising over $13,000 from individual contributions! This achievement also makes ECWA eligible for a $2,000 match from an anonymous donor! Thank you so much for your financial support, which helps ECWA to maintain our important work during a time of economic uncertainty!

Thank You!

The 2011 Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association Annual Meeting was a success, with over 30 members attending and electing seven new members to our Board of Directors. Sally Hoyt's Stormwater 101 class enlightened us about how stormwater affects the watershed and what can be done to improve water quality. Chris Dreps reviewed the year's accomplishments and gave us a peek at exciting projects on the horizon. Ellen Ciompi kept it lively with "Hurray for Ellerbe" and another song I forget (inside joke). Lots of door prizes were given out, and the food from Whole Foods, Ninth Street Bakery, and All About Beer Magazine was yummy. Finally, the Silent Auction items raised $1,400 for ECWA!

The new Directors are Perry Sugg, Lee Ann Tilley, Tony Tschopp (Secretary), Chuck Eppinette, Lesley Starke, Leslie McClellan, and Jessie Allen. They join Steve Cohn (President), Joanne Abel (Vice President), Ted Compton (Treasurer), Margot Ward, Peter Raabe, Mike Shiflett, and Donna Griffin. We are excited to have such a great group!

Leaving the Board this year are Larry Brockman, Katherine O'Brien, and Kathi Beratan (who has been on leave). Although they are taking a well-deserved rest from the Board, none are far away! Larry continues to co-chair the Land Stewardship Committee, Katherine continues to be a fundraiser extraodinaire, and we're working to corral Kathi into some technical advising. So, thank you all for your incredible work for Ellerbe Creek!

--- Chris Dreps

The Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association is installing residential rain gardens right here in our watershed through a contract with the City of Durham's Stormwater Services. We will come out and assess your yard as a potential site for the rain garden. There is no obligation associated with having your residence evaluated as a potential site. Appropriate sites, which must be within the Ellerbe Creek watershed, will be selected by ECWA staff based on site feasibility and other factors. This first year, we will install 3 free rain gardens. We will keep a list of interested homeowners for future rain garden opportunities.

If you are interested in having a rain garden installed on your property through this new watershed partnership, or want more information, please contact Katherine Meehan or 919-949-9692, by Friday July 15. The gardens will be installed between August 2011 and March 2012, with the first installation scheduled to begin in August.

A brief introduction to rain gardens and few rain garden photos, as well as a fun and "retro" video called Managing Stormwater, by the City Stormwater Services Division, are provided here >>===> Your Stormwater Dollars at Work.

What is a rain garden?

There are lots of ways you can reduce water pollution, but rain gardens may be the most beautiful of them. A rain garden is like a bowl or basin in your yard that captures rainwater from your roof, sidewalks, and driveways, allowing it to soak into the soil instead of polluting local watersheds as stormwater runoff. As an added bonus, since rain gardens are planted with an assortment of native plants, they make an attractive, low-maintenance addition to your yard.

--- Katherine Meehan

To see the entire collection of images from the 2011 Beaver Queen Pageant click here.

The Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association (ECWA) is pleased to welcome its new Executive Director, Chris Dreps. Dreps is ECWA’s first full-time Executive Director and will oversee all aspects of the organization’s management, growth, outreach, and fundraising.

A North Carolina native, Dreps comes to ECWA with 16 years of experience in watershed management, environmental conservation, and volunteer outreach including work overseas in the Central African Republic, Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua. He has worked to improve water quality in the region during his six-year term as the Director of the Upper Neuse River Basin Association (UNRBA). Among other responsibilities there, he worked with local municipalities to facilitate voluntary implementation of the Upper Neuse Watershed Management Plan. The Upper Neuse River Basin is the drinking water source for much of Wake County, and includes the Ellerbe Creek Watershed.

Dreps has a strong scientific background in watershed and natural resource management. He has a MS degree in Forestry and Environmental Resources, with an emphasis in Hydrology, as well as a MS degree in Urban Planning. His knowledge of regional water issues combined with an understanding of planning and policy fits perfectly with the needs and concerns facing the Ellerbe Creek watershed. Dreps lives in the Eno watershed in Durham County. He is an avid gardener, and is married with three children.

Diana Tetens, ECWA’s previous Executive Director, will move into the position of Director of Land Conservation and Special Projects. Her work will focus on identifying and acquiring (or placing easements on) land important to protecting the water quality within the watershed, as well as implementing other projects related to stormwater management, and restoration.

-- Katherine Meehan

Robert Meehan, Katherine Meehan, Matt Brockman and Larry Brockman went out near the heron rookery in mid March hoping to scope out an area to experience wood cock doing their unique mating ritual. Although no wood cock were spotted we did see a few bats, heron and many of toads and frogs. The following video was taken at the heron rookery and is apparently at the height of the frog breeding season. Although, not as apparent on the video, the chorus of the frogs was deafening, we literally had to cover our ears just to stay around and watch the sunset.

ECWA member Dan Kaplan has updated his excellent checklist, Birds of West Ellerbe Creek Preserve and Indian Trail Park: A Seasonal Checklist. You can view and download your own copy on the Critter Surveys page under the tab "Bird List".

This hidden gem is located Behind Compare Foods and Big Lots, between Club Boulevard and Interstate 85. The Beaver Marsh is 32 acres of undeveloped land that includes a spring fed freshwater pond set in a 25-acre floodplain/wetland area and 7 acres of upland forest. The wetland provides a beautiful oasis of green in an otherwise highly urbanized environment. Located in one of downtown Durham’s gateways, the site has a diverse array of native plants, over 75 species of migratory and resident birds, 10 species each of dragon and damsel flies, and five species of frogs. In the center of the pond is a large active beaver lodge!

Read more from ECWA's Beaver Marsh Preserve brochure.
Please note that this brochure is a large (2.2MB) PDF file.

Click below to view the UNC-TV North Carolina Now segment about the work being done by ECWA to preserve and protect Ellerbe Creek. The show was part of their "Environmental Heroes" series. This video was produced by the Medical and Science Journalism Program of the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication along with UNC-TV. Many thanks to Dr. Tom Linden, Andrew Vanderveer, and the crew for all their work on this project.

-- Joanne Abel

A 0.7 mile stretch of Ellerbe Creek’s channel in the 17-Acre Wood Preserve is about to get a make-over. The stream channel is not in the shape it once was—literally.

In the 1950s, the US Army Corps of Engineers decided that straight streams with deep, U-shaped channels were most “efficient” for avoiding local flooding, so they straightened and deepened stream channels throughout the North Carolina Piedmont. These altered channels function very well as stormwater conveyance ditches, but they lose much of the stream’s ability to keep its water clean, provide a home and food for critters, and allow stormwater to soak into the ground to replenish groundwater. And those high, steep banks are unstable: fast-flowing water during storms erodes the bottom of the banks and causes sections to collapse.

Read more HERE

ECWAs own Kathi Beratan, of NCSU's Dept. of Forestry and Environmental Resources, was featured on the February 19th airing of "Shooting the Bull" with Barry Ragin and Kevin Davis on WXDU Radio. She talks about stormwater management in Durham, and gives a preview of her guided walk around the Avondale Drive beaver pond.

You can listen to the entire program using the audio player below or with your iTunes software (do a search for "Shooting the Bull") or by visiting Internet Archive.

A new city ordinance has raised awareness of the issue, and the cost of meeting state requirements. Stormwater management in urban areas is not simple, but it is essential for healthy streams and lakes, and a safe water supply. To help people understand the situation, ECWA’s water quality committee has prepared an overview description of the underlying causes and impacts of stormwater in Durham, and a systematic approach to stormwater planning that would help clean up Ellerbe Creek and restoring its ability to provide valuable ecosystem services.

-- Kathi Beratan

Read the entire document: A Systematic Strategy for Stormwater Management in the Ellerbe Creek Watershed.

In order to make everyone aware of the botanical wonders in the Ellerbe Creek headwaters, I've started a blog about Bennett Place, the 40 acre Civil War historic site that Ellerbe Creek - only two feet wide at that point - flows through. ECWA has a long history of working with Bennett Place staff to manage their property for all the unusual species that grow there. Cynthie and I are trying to continue that collaboration. The blog has four posts thus far, with photos and text, at BennettPlaceFlora.blogspot.com.

Please let me know how you like it. Comments and suggestions would be very helpful. I'm hoping to eventually get enough photos and text online that people can take a virtual tour of the watershed.

-Steve Hiltner

Visit Steve's Bennett Place Flora blog.

Not far from my house, in the heart of one of Durham’s older neighborhoods, is pearl mill branch. Its headwaters are nearby, and a mile or so downstream it joins Ellerbe Creek, the main waterway flowing through the city.

When I first discovered pearl mill branch, I knew little about it. A lover of nature but no naturalist, for years I walked or biked along the paved trail that follows its course, cocooned in ignorance.

This ignorance was blissful. My heart pumped at the sheer existence of the creek: I delighted, conspiratorily, in the way it forced itself - a small green concession - from the urban maw. Blessed be the waters, I sang as I meandered along its sides. And blessed too the contours of the land that bend the waters letting them flow, gurgle, and catch the light. And forget not the green jungle that tangles and thrives along its banks. Such was my gratitude for this little fragment of pulsating life: sweet, a little comic, but straight and true."

To read the entire essay, please see our Reflections page.