In Tennessee, one battle against flooding could take place in the little waterways branching through the state’s rural communities.
Floodplain and stream restoration have long been considered among the most important efforts to reduce flood impacts. But with limited regulation and oversight, these areas are often unprotected.
“It’s going to take state and federal dollars to work with private landowners to help develop healthy riparian areas along the stream. That’s the best that anybody can do,” said Barron Crawford, the wildlife manager for the Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge unit that’s downstream from Waverly.
Essentially, that means regulations and financial incentives. Protection and restoration efforts can then be coordinated by conservation groups, Crawford said.
In the Middle Tennessee areas impacted by August flooding, streams were the one consistency with devastation. Streambanks collapsed, revealing cliffs of artificially smooth soil and mangled tree roots. Those changes set up the county for further erosion and vulnerability with each new rainstorm.
Streams can be disturbed by agriculture, logging and development, and infrastructure like levees and dams can change the hydrology of streams and disconnect them from their natural floodplains.
It’s well understood that healthy streams require adjacent vegetation. But experts say vegetation should extend even beyond the buffer zones to the entirety of the floodplain, which can then act like a reservoir to temporarily store water and moderate the extremes of streamflow.
Chad Hendren, a resident in Humphreys County outside the worst-affected areas, watched the creek near his house rise, overflow and carry away earth. The morning after the storm, Hendren and his neighbors fixed a broken water line near their homes while standing on unstable soil.
“The larger impact for a somewhat low-population, low-income county is to have the infrastructure means to repair and get ahead of this erosion,” Hendren said.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM