VCU and The Nature Conservancy to Celebrate Completion of the VCU Rice Center Wetland and Stream Restoration Project

By Sathya Achia Abraham and Tom McCann

Virginia Commonwealth University, together with The Nature Conservancy, this week will celebrate the completion of a critical stage of a significant wetland and stream restoration project along the lower James River in Charles City County.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place Wednesday, Sept. 28, at 10:30 a.m. at the VCU Rice Center, 3701 John Tyler Memorial Hwy., Charles City, Va.

Remarks will be made by Leonard A. Smock, Ph.D., director of the VCU Rice Center; Anthony Moore, Virginia Assistant Secretary of Natural Resources; W. Tayloe Murphy Jr., former Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources and a member of the Rice Center Board of Trustees; Michael L. Lipford, Virginia executive director of The Nature Conservancy; and Thomas F. Huff, Ph.D., vice provost for VCU Life Sciences.

VCU and The Nature Conservancy partnered to remove a dam on Kimages Creek and restore associated tidal wetlands and the stream at the VCU Rice Center. Removing the dam reestablishes the natural connection between the James River and Kimages Creek and allows for the restoration of 20 acres of tidal wetlands, 50 acres of non-tidal wetlands and more than a mile and a half of the formerly submerged channel of Kimages Creek. See a time-lapse video of the dam being removed here.

The wetland and stream restoration project now allows fish to migrate from the James River into Kimages Creek and creates habitat for waterfowl and wetland-dependent migratory birds. Additional restoration efforts include plantings to help reestablish native wetland plant communities. 

The project, supported by the Virginia Aquatic Resources Trust Fund, the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and American Rivers, was conducted jointly by the VCU Rice Center and The Nature Conservancy in collaboration with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

For directions to the VCU Rice Center, visit http://www.vcu.edu/rice/about/location.html.