Mount Hope River

Connecticut

A herd of free-roaming cattle trampled the banks of this river until it grew too wide, and it took a restoration project to shrink it back.

naturalengineeringfishing

At one bend in the Mount Hope River, the water runs through a farm where cattle roamed free. The animals worked the banks down into mud. Unstable banks meant erosion, and the eroded soil ruined fish habitat downstream. The river itself spread out, growing wider than it should have been where it crossed the farm. In 2006 a restoration project put it back. Crews narrowed the channel to a normal width. They set large boulders and logs along the edge, laid down erosion-control fabric, and planted vegetation to hold the soil. Then they fenced the cattle out. The river still carries trouble elsewhere. Almost the whole length of it through Ashford counts as impaired because of elevated bacteria, traced to runoff from farm fields, houses, and roads. The impaired stretch runs from the source at Morey Pond all the way to the last place the river crosses Route 89.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
These cattle trampled the riverbanks, causing them to be unstable. This instability led to excessive erosion, which degraded fish habitat downstream of the site, and also led to excessive widening of the river where it passed through the farm.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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