Problem: Straightening and channelizing irrigation waterways has turned these once healthy streams into mechanized water delivery conduits, thus removing many original farming benefits. This results in threatened or destroyed stream vitality, leaves canal banks bare of native vegetation that filter excess nutrients and chemicals, and makes them vulnerable to weed growth. With awkward 90 degree bends, narrowed streams cannot handle even moderate winter storm runoff flows, producing bank erosion and, with flooding, considerable property damage. Artificial, lifeless channels provide little habitat for fish or wildlife, their open ground supports weed infestation, and erosion is inevitable even without high stream flows. 

 Solution: Correctly-terraced and planted canal banks foster the right vegetation in the right place to provide the right benefit. Appropriate trees (oaks, willows, cottonwoods) on the south side of a stream will shade out and reduce invasive weed growth. With roots up to 10' deep, native plants and shrubs out-compete weeds and stabilize bank sides while filtering and absorbing excess nutrients and chemicals. Widening channelized stream banks into more natural cross-sections helps sustain native plant vegetation and increases flow capacity. Planting native shrubs, forbs, and grasses provides important wildlife cover and nesting areas, and the protective groundcover controls erosion. In short, strategically-installed native plants, shrubs and trees revitalize otherwise dead waterways, even after channelization.

For further information from our Resource Library select:  Riparian Enhancement