A startled hawk flew from its tree perch. A muskrat slipped into the flow of water. A squirrel scampered along a water-bound log. A painted turtle sunned on another log downstream.
“Look at this fish, my oh my,” said Mark Whitmore, as his canoe paddle dipped into camoflauge-green water.
The Ithaca man has never tired of the beauty of the Owasco Flats with its turquoise damsel flies, purple-and-white morning glories and spawning trout. He has spent hours and hours on the flats as the point man for the “Owasco Flats Conservation Planning and Stakeholder Survey Project” - which was finished in June and publicly released earlier this month.
One of the main questions explored in the project: Could the water quality of Owasco Lake be improved by allowing the Owasco Inlet, the lake's single biggest tributary, to flood its banks and by restoring the wetlands of the Owasco Flats?
The southern end of the lake requires dredging because of the deepening sediment. Nutrients like phosphorus have increased the growth of weeds.
Some of the problem may have been created by a 1947 flood control project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to widen and deepen the inlet, including straightening the channel, removing trees, gravel bars and debris jams.
According to the report, Dr. Greg Nagle, a research associate at Cornell University, says the Corps of Engineers' flood control project increased the channel's rate of flow, cut the Inlet off from its floodplain and its
ability to flood, and limited the ability of the bordering wetlands to filter and buffer nutrients in the sediments being carried into Owasco Lake.
“Stream bank erosion is a natural process but when accelerated by human impacts creates a condition that is unbalanced,” the report said. If the inlet can't flood, the nutrients in floodwaters can't be pushed out of the main channel and the bordering wetlands can't filter floodwaters of nutrients before the nutrients enter Owasco Lake.
Water quality is not just a lake issue or a flats issue, but the issue of the health of the entire watershed, Whitmore said.
With that global vision in mind, a steering committee composed of local and state government officials and citizens groups, including the Finger Lakes Land Trust, was established to identify important issues with the wetlands that border Owasco Lake to the south and are home to the lake's main tributaries. Property owners also were interviewed about their hopes and concerns for the flats, 1,500 acres of swamp, marsh cropland and fallow fields south of Owasco Lake and north of the village of Moravia, bordered by Route 38 to the west and Rockefeller road to the east.
Of the property owners interviewed by Whitmore, 65-percent are in favor of wetlands restoration, 18-percent are against it and 18-percent are unsure. Forty-seven percent are in favor of plans to establish the flats as a wildlife management area. Twelve percent are opposed.
Whitmore, who readily says flood control is not his expertise, would love to see the Corps of Engineers return to the flats and evaluate the water flow. “Can we also improve the water quality of the lake, all the while striving to assume a more natural flow and increasing its buffering capacity?” he asked.
The flats has already been identified as an important spot to keep undeveloped with its mention in the 2006 state Open Space Conversation Plan. “Public access (in the Finger Lakes) for swimming, photography, shoreline fishing and canoeing is minimal. Natural, forested shoreline is itself a scarce resource, incrementally lost over time to home site development. Wetland complexes associated with inlets, outlet and other tributaries to the Finger Lakes provide important fish and wildlife habitat,” the plan said.
Marie Kautz, state Department of Environmental Conservation Region 7 Wildlife Manager, said this project, funded by the Central New York Regional Planing and Development Board, was helpful because it has already begun the public conversation about the future of the flats.
Kautz hopes that with new funding under the Gov. Eliot Spitzer administration for wetland work, she can use a staff member's time to develop a conceptual management plan to restore the flats' wetlands, improve water quality and improve access to recreation.
“The potential is there down the road in two or three decades to have a very large area under state management and that makes it pretty special and pretty worth pursuing. It's really the combination of biological diversity and (opportunity) for protection,” Kautz said.
Based on Whitmore's survey, there are 360 plant species, including 50 tree species, and 11 distinct plant communities in the flats. The most diverse plant community is an oak-hickory forest that has 30 species of trees, including the threatened shellbark hickory. Around 395 acres are still tilled. The flats are 68-percent privately owned and 32-percent owned by municipalities or non-profits.
Whitmore's report also included a detailed survey of the location of nine invasive, non-native plant species that could be controlled in favor of native New York plants. Most widespread of the nonnatives are garlic mustard and Reed canarygrass, which was introduced by a farmer on Rockefeller Road in the 1940s.
There is no perfect natural state to return to the inlet and the flats to. Human intervention has changed the Owasco Lake watershed at least since the mid-1800s. The Owasco Outlet was deepened by four feet and widened to 28-feet to provide water for Auburn's factories during dryer summers.
The 1961 reconstruction of the State Dam on the Owasco Outlet likely created an emergent marsh just north of the Owasco Inlet's mouth that Whitmore likens to something from “Jurassic Park.” Since the 1960s, the lake level has been kept near 713-feet in late spring and summer and 710-feet in winter in preparation for melting snows.
“It's not a pristine site. There's a lengthy human history,” said Andrew Zepp, executive director of the Finger Lakes Land Trust. “It's a very productive habitat for fish and wildlife at the same time it's been significantly altered. It should be assessed if the inlet could be restored to a more natural character while at the same time not creating more flooding problems.”
Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net
The Ithaca man has never tired of the beauty of the Owasco Flats with its turquoise damsel flies, purple-and-white morning glories and spawning trout. He has spent hours and hours on the flats as the point man for the “Owasco Flats Conservation Planning and Stakeholder Survey Project” - which was finished in June and publicly released earlier this month.
One of the main questions explored in the project: Could the water quality of Owasco Lake be improved by allowing the Owasco Inlet, the lake's single biggest tributary, to flood its banks and by restoring the wetlands of the Owasco Flats?
The southern end of the lake requires dredging because of the deepening sediment. Nutrients like phosphorus have increased the growth of weeds.
Some of the problem may have been created by a 1947 flood control project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to widen and deepen the inlet, including straightening the channel, removing trees, gravel bars and debris jams.
According to the report, Dr. Greg Nagle, a research associate at Cornell University, says the Corps of Engineers' flood control project increased the channel's rate of flow, cut the Inlet off from its floodplain and its
ability to flood, and limited the ability of the bordering wetlands to filter and buffer nutrients in the sediments being carried into Owasco Lake.
“Stream bank erosion is a natural process but when accelerated by human impacts creates a condition that is unbalanced,” the report said. If the inlet can't flood, the nutrients in floodwaters can't be pushed out of the main channel and the bordering wetlands can't filter floodwaters of nutrients before the nutrients enter Owasco Lake.
Water quality is not just a lake issue or a flats issue, but the issue of the health of the entire watershed, Whitmore said.
With that global vision in mind, a steering committee composed of local and state government officials and citizens groups, including the Finger Lakes Land Trust, was established to identify important issues with the wetlands that border Owasco Lake to the south and are home to the lake's main tributaries. Property owners also were interviewed about their hopes and concerns for the flats, 1,500 acres of swamp, marsh cropland and fallow fields south of Owasco Lake and north of the village of Moravia, bordered by Route 38 to the west and Rockefeller road to the east.
Of the property owners interviewed by Whitmore, 65-percent are in favor of wetlands restoration, 18-percent are against it and 18-percent are unsure. Forty-seven percent are in favor of plans to establish the flats as a wildlife management area. Twelve percent are opposed.
Whitmore, who readily says flood control is not his expertise, would love to see the Corps of Engineers return to the flats and evaluate the water flow. “Can we also improve the water quality of the lake, all the while striving to assume a more natural flow and increasing its buffering capacity?” he asked.
The flats has already been identified as an important spot to keep undeveloped with its mention in the 2006 state Open Space Conversation Plan. “Public access (in the Finger Lakes) for swimming, photography, shoreline fishing and canoeing is minimal. Natural, forested shoreline is itself a scarce resource, incrementally lost over time to home site development. Wetland complexes associated with inlets, outlet and other tributaries to the Finger Lakes provide important fish and wildlife habitat,” the plan said.
Marie Kautz, state Department of Environmental Conservation Region 7 Wildlife Manager, said this project, funded by the Central New York Regional Planing and Development Board, was helpful because it has already begun the public conversation about the future of the flats.
Kautz hopes that with new funding under the Gov. Eliot Spitzer administration for wetland work, she can use a staff member's time to develop a conceptual management plan to restore the flats' wetlands, improve water quality and improve access to recreation.
“The potential is there down the road in two or three decades to have a very large area under state management and that makes it pretty special and pretty worth pursuing. It's really the combination of biological diversity and (opportunity) for protection,” Kautz said.
Based on Whitmore's survey, there are 360 plant species, including 50 tree species, and 11 distinct plant communities in the flats. The most diverse plant community is an oak-hickory forest that has 30 species of trees, including the threatened shellbark hickory. Around 395 acres are still tilled. The flats are 68-percent privately owned and 32-percent owned by municipalities or non-profits.
Whitmore's report also included a detailed survey of the location of nine invasive, non-native plant species that could be controlled in favor of native New York plants. Most widespread of the nonnatives are garlic mustard and Reed canarygrass, which was introduced by a farmer on Rockefeller Road in the 1940s.
There is no perfect natural state to return to the inlet and the flats to. Human intervention has changed the Owasco Lake watershed at least since the mid-1800s. The Owasco Outlet was deepened by four feet and widened to 28-feet to provide water for Auburn's factories during dryer summers.
The 1961 reconstruction of the State Dam on the Owasco Outlet likely created an emergent marsh just north of the Owasco Inlet's mouth that Whitmore likens to something from “Jurassic Park.” Since the 1960s, the lake level has been kept near 713-feet in late spring and summer and 710-feet in winter in preparation for melting snows.
“It's not a pristine site. There's a lengthy human history,” said Andrew Zepp, executive director of the Finger Lakes Land Trust. “It's a very productive habitat for fish and wildlife at the same time it's been significantly altered. It should be assessed if the inlet could be restored to a more natural character while at the same time not creating more flooding problems.”
Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net
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