Serpentine Preserve

Serpentine Preserve Riparian Buffer Restoration

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Willistown Township Thanks CRC & The Department of Conservation & Natural Resources 

Willistown Parks & Recreation is grateful to the Chester Ridley Crum Watersheds Association (CRC) for their partnership in 2016 and 2017 to enhance the Serpentine Preserve riparian buffer. Many thanks to CRC for applying with us for the grants and to the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources for providing TreeVitalize and Rivers Conservation Program funding to CRC for this project. We are happy to be working together again on this latest restoration project!

Project Plans

CRC collaborated with Willistown Parks & Recreation and a landscape architect to come up with the riparian planting area, design, and plant list for the 2016 planting:
View the Site Context/Plan Cover
View the Existing Site Plan
View the Planting Plan
View the Planting Detail Plan
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Stay tuned for the final plans for of the 2017 Riparian Buffer Enhancement project!

What is a Riparian Buffer Planting?

Riparian buffer plantings are conducted in lands adjacent to water bodies to improve water quality. They filter sediment and pollutants before they enter the stream, stabilize the stream banks from erosion, slow flood waters and rainwater runoff, keep the water cool for and provide energy and nutrients to stream communities, and create valuable wildlife habitat.

What's Important about Serpentine Preserve's Streams?

CRC is managing the installation of a buffer planting along an unnamed intermittent tributary to the Serpentine Run. Both streams are located in our Serpentine Preserve and are headwater streams of the upper Ridley Creek watershed. Headwaters are the source waters of a river. Their health is crucial to the health of the entire freshwater ecosystem.

Stroud Water Research Center* describes headwater tributaries like these as “the lifeblood of our streams and rivers”, and states that “protecting and restoring the watersheds in which they arise will provide benefits vital to the health and well-being of Pennsylvania’s water resources and its citizens.” Indeed, among other things like recreation and natural beauty, these local streams provide our community and others with drinking water essential to our survival.

According to CRC, the Upper Ridley Creek Watershed supplies 2.7 million gallons per day of drinking water for over 40,000 residents in Upper Providence, Middletown, and Nether Providence Townships, as well as Media Borough, and another 815,000 gallons are withdrawn daily from private and public wells in the watershed. Ridley Creek is a tributary of the Delaware River. According to the Delaware River Basin Commission, the Delaware River, the longest free-flowing river east of the Mississippi, provides drinking water to about 15 million people in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The work we do in the headwaters areas of Willistown Township has wide-reaching impact. Together, CRC, and Willistown Township, and you can make a difference—please join us!

* Stroud is a preeminent and renowned water research center located in Avondale. Find out more about Stroud, and view their education programs, Protecting Headwaters: The Scientific Basis for Safeguarding Stream and River Ecosystems.