Stream Restoration News for May 21, 2008

Not a lot of news these days for me to pick from. Here are a few nuggets...

A new twist on an old idea: A new company in Seattle is pitching a scheme which essentially appears to be mitigation banking on public land, renting the land from the government, performing restoration, and then charging destructive industries for mitigation credit

Also in Seattle, paying landowners to protect Puget Sound

Revival of defunct Orono hydropower plant to restore fish passage on Penobscot River

The farm bill which recently passed Congress includes money for water conservation including $440 million for Chesapeake Bay

Channel reconstruction on a small tributary to the Blackfoot River in Montana “If people aren't used to seeing this work, it's kind of shocking - turning a stream into a construction site - but they've been so degraded that they're not functioning normally by any measure,” Pierce said. “It'll be a whole new stream when we're done.” No word on whether the whole new stream will actually function more normally than the one that was there before.

Work has begun to restore a section of stream near, and in collaboration with, Appalachian State University (NC)

Sandra Postel on water and international development: The Forgotten Infrastructure: Safeguarding Freshwater Ecosystems

American Rivers Blog offers tips on taking better photos of restoration projects