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OUTDOORS: Au Sable trout will find cleaner water in Grayling
April 22, 2004
BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
GRAYLING -- The Au Sable River sparkles in the spring sunshine, its clear, smooth-flowing waters carrying food and oxygen to brown, brook and rainbow trout.
A quick eruption of water marks the spot where a trout has risen for a black stone fly, one of the numerous insects that hatch and lay eggs of the next generation.
This spring ritual will bring tens of thousands of anglers to northern Michigan streams for Saturday's opening of the inland trout season.
A group of anglers and civic leaders hopes that when those fishermen arrive next spring, the water will carry far less of something else -- contaminants that pour into the river through a storm drain system.
The drains were put in place 30 years ago with the best of intentions, but they have made Grayling the last major source of pollution on the upper Au Sable.
A combination of government grants and local matching money has raised $750,000 to divert and treat 90 percent of Grayling's storm water runoff for three years, eliminating the biggest single source of contamination on the headwaters of one of the country's most storied trout streams.
The money is peanuts in terms of the budgets for say, the Iraq War or champagne for State Department dinners, but it took the combined efforts of the City of Grayling, the Paul Young chapter of Trout Unlimited and the Michigan Fly Fishing Club to raise that amount.
"If you were to design a community to do this, Grayling would be the perfect place," said Steve Southard, a leader in the effort to clean up the river. "It's the right size, and it's built on sand.
"Grayling is doing just the greatest job. This year, the city sent the street sweepers out early and swept up a lot of sand and other junk before the spring rains washed them into the river."
Nearly all Grayling storm drains are marked at the curbside openings with stickers that depict a trout. They warn people that anything they dump into the opening will flow straight into the river. The stickers were applied two years ago by high school students and volunteers from Trout Unlimited to discourage people from disposing of oil and other contaminants.
"Before we put the stickers on, a lot of people didn't know that," said Brad Jensen, executive director of the Huron Pines Resource, Conservation and Development Council in Grayling. "They thought the water went to a treatment facility of some kind.
"People who live here don't want to see a lot of stuff like that going into the river, and if you make them aware of what's going on, most of them will do the right thing."
Fixing the problem in a place like Grayling requires some amazingly simple solutions. In most parts of town, all that will be involved is cutting openings in curbs and directing the water into swales between the sidewalk and road, where it will filter down into the sand.
In a few other places, where there are greater amounts of contaminated runoff from places like parking lots and gas stations, the water will be sent to small collecting basins where oil can be skimmed off. In some places, small wetlands and low spots along a railroad or between businesses offer ideal sites to divert the water and let it sink into the soil rather than running straight into the river.
Once Huron Pines completes the project in Grayling, Jensen hopes to do the same thing on a smaller scale in southern Otsego County, which sends storm-water runoff to northern headwaters of the Au Sable, and Roscommon, which is responsible for some of the contaminants in the Au Sable South Branch.
"It's pretty amazing, but a little town like Grayling can become a model for storm-water cleanup for the whole country," Southard said. "We're going to show that if we can do it in a town of 2,000, bigger places can, too."
Contact ERIC SHARP at 313-222-2511 or esharp@freepress.com.
April 22, 2004
BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
GRAYLING -- The Au Sable River sparkles in the spring sunshine, its clear, smooth-flowing waters carrying food and oxygen to brown, brook and rainbow trout.
A quick eruption of water marks the spot where a trout has risen for a black stone fly, one of the numerous insects that hatch and lay eggs of the next generation.
This spring ritual will bring tens of thousands of anglers to northern Michigan streams for Saturday's opening of the inland trout season.
A group of anglers and civic leaders hopes that when those fishermen arrive next spring, the water will carry far less of something else -- contaminants that pour into the river through a storm drain system.
The drains were put in place 30 years ago with the best of intentions, but they have made Grayling the last major source of pollution on the upper Au Sable.
A combination of government grants and local matching money has raised $750,000 to divert and treat 90 percent of Grayling's storm water runoff for three years, eliminating the biggest single source of contamination on the headwaters of one of the country's most storied trout streams.
The money is peanuts in terms of the budgets for say, the Iraq War or champagne for State Department dinners, but it took the combined efforts of the City of Grayling, the Paul Young chapter of Trout Unlimited and the Michigan Fly Fishing Club to raise that amount.
"If you were to design a community to do this, Grayling would be the perfect place," said Steve Southard, a leader in the effort to clean up the river. "It's the right size, and it's built on sand.
"Grayling is doing just the greatest job. This year, the city sent the street sweepers out early and swept up a lot of sand and other junk before the spring rains washed them into the river."
Nearly all Grayling storm drains are marked at the curbside openings with stickers that depict a trout. They warn people that anything they dump into the opening will flow straight into the river. The stickers were applied two years ago by high school students and volunteers from Trout Unlimited to discourage people from disposing of oil and other contaminants.
"Before we put the stickers on, a lot of people didn't know that," said Brad Jensen, executive director of the Huron Pines Resource, Conservation and Development Council in Grayling. "They thought the water went to a treatment facility of some kind.
"People who live here don't want to see a lot of stuff like that going into the river, and if you make them aware of what's going on, most of them will do the right thing."
Fixing the problem in a place like Grayling requires some amazingly simple solutions. In most parts of town, all that will be involved is cutting openings in curbs and directing the water into swales between the sidewalk and road, where it will filter down into the sand.
In a few other places, where there are greater amounts of contaminated runoff from places like parking lots and gas stations, the water will be sent to small collecting basins where oil can be skimmed off. In some places, small wetlands and low spots along a railroad or between businesses offer ideal sites to divert the water and let it sink into the soil rather than running straight into the river.
Once Huron Pines completes the project in Grayling, Jensen hopes to do the same thing on a smaller scale in southern Otsego County, which sends storm-water runoff to northern headwaters of the Au Sable, and Roscommon, which is responsible for some of the contaminants in the Au Sable South Branch.
"It's pretty amazing, but a little town like Grayling can become a model for storm-water cleanup for the whole country," Southard said. "We're going to show that if we can do it in a town of 2,000, bigger places can, too."
Contact ERIC SHARP at 313-222-2511 or esharp@freepress.com.
