Natural rap to ease the river blues?

The town of Saratoga was faced with two options to repair and correct the North Platte River running through Saratoga.

The first option was to do nothing, according to a grant application. The second option – fix two eroding sections of the river.

The town decided to seek funding, conduct surveys, make a plan to repair two banks and explore rechanneling the river through town, said Chuck Bartlett, town engineer and public works director.

Although the proposed date of actual construction is the spring or fall of 2014, the town has a general idea of how to fix the river, Bartlett said.

Without a paddle

The town of Saratoga is looking into fixing two eroded sections of the river near Veterans Island.

Erosion on these banks threatens important infrastructure, like the access bridge into Veterans Island, the Public Works facility and sewer and water lines, Bartlett said.

The same banks are lined with concrete, which is unsightly and creating sediment problems downstream, Bartlett said.

Town workers most likely placed the concrete on the banks during the 70s and 80s as riprap, Bartlett said.

“Trying to get riprap around here was extremely difficult back then,” he said. “Using concrete now is not recommended.”

In addition, sediment from the river is collecting near the highway bridge north of town. The sediment is creating an island that is changing the flow of the river. The change in flow is dangerous to people who float the river, Bartlett said.

“When you have a wide shallow river, you are going to get deposition,” Bartlett said. “We are looking at possibly rechanneling the river through town to take care of that problem, plus give additional flood plain for flood control.”

The island has been removed several times in the past, but it keeps coming back. To permanently fix the problem the island creates will take more than a front end loader, Bartlett said.

Surveys and grants

The town of Saratoga set aside $80,000 to conduct two surveys of the river. One survey will focus on the two sections of the North Platte near Veterans Island. The other survey will focus on the entire section of the river passing through Saratoga.

The surveys, when completed, will show data that will help the town find the best way to fix the river, without affecting community members, Bartlett said.

Bartlett thinks the results will suggest rechanneling the river to help solve the sediment problem.

The town has not started seeking funding to rechannel the river, Bartlett said.

However, the town of Saratoga, with the help of WLC, an engineering firm in Rawlins, has applied for two Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grants to help fund construction of the two spots near Veterans Island.

The grants the town applied for aren’t your typical grants, Bartlett said.

“On a lot of stuff you just submit your grant application and wait to hear back on it, where with this one, you have to address the concerns of the public and all these other agencies,” he said.

Before any FEMA money is awarded, the grant applications are sent to organizations like the Department of Environmental Quality, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Game and Fish Department.

“They come up with questions and you have to address those,” Bartlett said.

Those questions address wildlife, historic sites, the quality of water and several other issues.

The town has been working on getting funding for the projects for a year now, Bartlett said. The town should hear back from FEMA about the grants in about two weeks.

A natural rap

To repair the banks, the town “wants to take the most natural, environmentally friendly way to stabilize banks,” Bartlett said.

Bio engineering is using anything from tree stumps to logs to plants to stabilize banks rather than conventional riprap.

“It’s basically the same thing as riprap, but it looks natural,” Bartlett said. “I think it is more appealing to see a log or a tree stump laying there than huge boulders.”

The bio engineering approach may also be cheaper than using conventional riprap and is better for fisheries, Bartlett said.

“The fish like intermixing with that stuff, and what we have been told, it is slightly less expensive,” he said.

Some sections may still need to be conventionally riprapped.

The project could possibly involve putting barbs in the river, Bartlett said.

A barb is a 20-to-25-foot long piece of riprap that goes into the river. The piece of riprap will direct the water flow away from the bank and back into the center of the river. Depending on the height of the river flow, the barbs may or may not be visible.The barbs would not affect recreationalists. Bartlett said.

The project also involves making room at the bottom of the river called a flood plain. The flood plain would keep the river from overflowing in case of a flood, Bartlett said, although there is no such thing as complete flood control.

In the event of a flood, people would still have to sandbag, Bartlett said.

In a perfect world, the town would complete river surveys by the fall, get funding and start fixing all the river problems by 2014, Bartlett said.

If the projects come to light, they will come in three phases, Bartlett said. Phase one will be to complete surveys, phase two will be to design the projects and phase three will be construction.

Public meetings before and during each phase will take place, he said.

Editors note: This is the second in a series of stories on what it takes to correct the Upper North Platte River through Saratoga.