1900 Fishermen at Alley Pond
Courtesy Queens Borough Public Library, Hal. B. Fullerton Photograph
2002 Alley Creek Trout Restoration Project
Trouts Unlimited Urban Success Stories,
Fred Thorner
URBAN RIVERS SUCCESS STORIES
The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and consultants from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) all assisted the NYC chapter with the study. The DEC assisted with water quality testing and helped to install data-logging thermometers and the DEP conducted a macroinvertebrate study. The chapter worked with consultants from the USGS to study groundwater resources around the creek. Eight to ten chapter members helped out regularly with monitoring and served as the main labor force behind the project.
Big Apple Trout: Alley Creek, New York The idea that trout could live next door to the Long Island Expressway would have crossed few of even the most s t a l w a r t conservationist minds just a few years ago. But today, the New York Northern Long Island Watershed (Source: EPA) City (NYC) Chapter has begun to restore Alley Creek, a small coldwater stream flowing through Northeast Queens in New York City.
Volunteers recorded good invertebrate diversity in Alley Creek, including scuds, mayflies, leeches, midge nymphs and caddis flies. Electro-shocking turned up nine-spine sticklebacks, eels and killies. The surrounding area supports several nonaquatic animal species, including pheasants, possums, raccoons, muskrats and red fox. Not bad diversity for such an unlikely setting. Even more encouraging were the findings that, with the exception of temperature spikes during storm events, temperatures in the stream remain low enough to support even the sensitive brook trout nearly year-round.
The Alley Creek watershed is a remnant of the region’s original landscape, now comprised mostly of expressways and densely populated suburbs. Alley Creek has a long history of human manipulation, beginning in colonial times when Dutch settlers dammed the stream, creating Alley Pond. The pond was subsequently drained in the 1930s to make room for the Long Island Expressway.
In spring of 2001 TU volunteers stocked 200 more brook trout in Alley Creek. The chapter stocked fingerlings that were raised as part of a local Trout in the Classroom project. Trout in the Classroom provides an opportunity for young people to learn about fish biology and coldwater conservation by hatching and raising young fish in their classrooms and by releasing those fish into a local stream (visit Trout in the Classroom at www.troutintheclassroom.com).
Alley Creek is a unique coastal spring fed stream with a low gradient and a streambed of sandy glacial outwash. The creek has an east and west branch and flows through a city preserve, emptying into Little Neck Bay, an estuary in Long Island Sound. The east branch is a narrow creek only five feet wide and a few hundred yards long and is the focus of the NYC Chapter’s efforts.
The second study was completed in September of 2001. The NYC Chapter is currently preparing to hire a consultant to help assess the studies they have already completed and to create a restoration plan for the creek.
In 1998, the chapter stocked Alley Creek with 200 brook trout fingerlings. Surveys 5 months after stocking turned up trout from 6-8” long living in the creek. But 5 months later, volunteers found no trout. To better understand what was impacting the stocked fish, the chapter began a one-year water quality study. Encouraged by initial results, the chapter began another study with an Embrace-A-Stream grant and Long Island Sound Study funding from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Alley Creek’s east branch is located in the Alley Pond Environmental Center (www.alleypond.com). The chapter hopes that in the future a restored creek will be used as an educational tool for the center, ensuring an opportunity for area young people to learn about the importance of protecting coldwater resources.
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Blue-Collar Turn Around: Naugatuck River, Connecticut
Until this project, the NYC Chapter has spent its energies helping with other projects in New York State. Now, the opportunity to help Alley Creek is focusing the chapter’s efforts closer to home. As former Chapter President Susanne Weiser notes, “Our members, like all TU activists, want a direct connection to the resource, a ‘home stream’. Until the project, we have loaned our conservation energy out to other chapters’ projects in New York State. This is a chance for us to focus directly on a big-city coldwater stream, and perhaps to create an original working model for other urban-environment stream reclamations to follow.”
Sea-run brown trout, American shad, alewife and blue back herring once resided in Connecticut’s Naugatuck River. A hub of the industrial revolution, the Naugatuck also helped fuel World Naugatuck Watershed Project Director Fred Thorner credits his son (Source: EPA) War II. Eight towns Eric Thorner with coming up with the idea to grew up along its restore Alley Creek as a little boy. Fred and cobanks and as they expanded began to spill dyes, director Wayne Tusa both admit chemicals, heavy metals, toxins to initial skepticism at the idea and sewage into the river. Eight “Our members, like all TU activists, that trout could coexist with such wastewater treatment plants want a direct connection to the intense development, but today emitted warm effluents rich in resource, a ‘home stream’. Until the they go so far as to say their most pollutants into the water. After a project, we have loaned our idealistic goals are to help series of catastrophic floods in conservation energy out to other establish a self-sustaining trout 1955, the Army Corps of chapters’ projects in New York State. population in the East Branch of This is a chance for us to focus directly Engineers built dams and the creek. Fred and Wayne agree armored channels to inhibit the on a big-city coldwater stream, and that the main goal, though, is to perhaps to create an original working river from breaching its banks. restore the stream’s water quality model for other urban-environment and habitat as much as possible By the 1970s the Naugatuck was stream reclamations to follow.” to provide an educational tool for the most polluted river in area residents to learn about Connecticut. As the river filled coldwater resources. with pollutants, fish and other aquatic life began to disappear. In many places the river was A recent article in Trout Magazine remarked, effectively dead. Adults warned children not to “Trout in New York City? Never say never to New play near the banks. Foul smells wafted off the Yorkers.” The NYC Chapter clearly has reason to water, encouraging people who lived near the be proud for taking on this seemingly impossible river to stay as far away from it as possible. Most task. If hard work, dedication and cooperation people did not want to even walk along the river, can bring back a coldwater stream to New York, let alone fish from it. In Chapter President Albin the city-est of cities, we can be hopeful for urban Weber’s words, “To fish you had to have money.” coldwater resources around the country. For more information, please contact Fred Thorner, New York City Chapter at 646-865-2000 or fritzy46@yahoo.com. Visit the New York City Chapter’s website at www.nyctu.org.
The pollution on the Naugatuck, initially a byproduct of the industrial revolution, with time turned into a problem of environmental justice. People who lived along the river were traditionally blue-collar employees of local industries. As the Naugatuck became more and more polluted it became impossible to fish from it. Only those who could afford to travel to more pristine areas could fish.
In Chapter President Albin Weber’s words, “To fish you had to have money.”
In 1976 the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection issued a proclamation that they would work to restore anadromous fish to the Naugatuck. A few local anglers, among them Neal Kingsworth and Bob Gregorski, took the proclamation to heart and began to do what they could to clean up the river. Neal and Bob formed the Naugatuck Valley Chapter of TU and 7