Beards Creek Stream Restoration

Wetland and stream habitat and function are restored using only wood structures.

Home to more than half a million people, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, is bordered to the east by the Chesapeake Bay. Not surprisingly, requirements for the County’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) permit are stringent. To help the County comply with those requirements, Biohabitats designed and constructed the restoration of Beards Creek, a degraded tributary to the South River and ultimately, the Bay. Working with the County and the nonprofit Arundel Rivers Federation, Biohabitats reconnected the stream to its floodplain to halt active headcutting and incision within the forested floodplain.

Channel-spanning engineered log jams, constructed with a combination of on-site woody material and imported trees, hold normal baseflow water surface just below the floodplain. The use of wood, the dominant form of natural grade control in the Coastal Plain, results in a resilient, nature-based solution for restoring stream and wetland health using construction methods that lower the carbon footprint of the project. Beaver dam analog (BDA) structures made of willow wattles were also installed across the floodplain to trap out-of-bank flows and further improve valley bottom habitat.

The project modified the hydraulics of the stream channel and valley to optimize floodplain reconnection of stormflows and improved stream geomorphology to ensure long-term bed and bank stability. The restoration also helped detain and slow stormwater flows throughout the full width of the valley bottom and restore ecological function to non-tidal wetlands.