February 9, 1999

Contact: Geoffrey Ryan (718/595-5371)

Stream Restoration Workshop

Nationally-recognized stream restoration consultant, David Rosgen, will be guest of honor at a reception to be held on Wednesday, February 17, at Alumni Hall on the SUNY Delhi Campus from 7:00 to 9:30 p.m. At the reception, Mr. Rosgen of Wildland Hydrology Consultants in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, will give a presentation on his "natural channel stability" approach to river restoration. Informal discussion over refreshments will follow.

Mr. Rosgen, who developed a widely-used stream assessment and classification system that predicts the behavior of streams from their form, is in the Catskill region to teach his short course, "Applied River Morphology." The course is one in a series of training workshops for area water resource managers. The series is coordinated by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Stream Management Program and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Sullivan County. It is sponsored by a diverse group of not-for-profit organizations and government agencies, including the Catskill Watershed Corporation, Trout Unlimited, Inc., the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, the State Department of Environmental Conservation, the State Emergency Management Office, the Watershed Agricultural Council, and the Soil and Water Conservation Districts of Delaware, Greene, Ulster, Schoharie and Sullivan Counties.

"We are now in an unprecedented era of stream restoration, working to put the kinks back into destabilized, over-widened streams," said Mr. Rosgen. "These restoration efforts are much needed, but, unless they are based on geomorphic assessments, they run the risk of working counter to natural channel stability concepts. We aim to restore rivers, achieve improved fish habitat and still maintain inherent stability. The challenge is to integrate process analyses and data inventories on a watershed basis so that we can work towards an ecosystem management approach."

Commissioner Joel A. Miele Sr. of DEP said, "This workshop series will provide resource professionals with the state-of-the-art tools and techniques they need to develop effective strategies for managing Catskill streams to meet our mutual objectives of protecting water quality, reducing flood risks and enhancing fish habitat."

Future sessions in the workshop series will focus on designing and monitoring vegetative stream buffers, constructing in-channel stabilization structures and integrating stormwater management with stream restoration, among others tools and techniques of this developing field.

PRESS ADVISORY

Media representatives are invited to attend the reception. You are also encouraged to join Mr. Rosgen while he is conducting a field exercise in the Delhi area on Thursday, February 18th. To make arrangements for the field exercise, please call Mark Vian (914/657-6350) or Karen Bergeron-Klein (914/382-1512) of DEP's Stream Management Program.