The Paxton Creek Watershed and Education Association this week made its Paxton Creek Rivers Conservation Plan available to the public. The Plan outlines a strategy to achieve watershed protection goals over the next 20 years.

The plan will help improve and protect the watershed’s resources for the more than 60,000 people who own homes or businesses in the Paxton Creek Watershed that includes much of Harrisburg, Penbrook, Susquehanna and Lower Paxton townships.

E. Drannon Buskirk, Jr., Coordinator of the Paxton Creek Rivers Conservation Plan and former PCWEA President said, “The watershed whose resources – including lumber, food, brick clay and water – built Harrisburg, now performs mainly as a destructive stormwater drain and pollutants sink with increased flooding. These problems have been building for 300 years. Now is the time to reverse them.

Paxton Creek was a focus during Harrisburg’s “City Beautiful Movement” and renaissance from 1900 to 1915 as sewers, water filtration plants, asphalt roads, and parks were built. In the past 50 years, the creek was channelized, and farms have been replaced by homes, businesses and roads.

The economic growth in Paxton Creek brings a host of problems including erosion and water pollution, and the creek has become little more than a conduit for floodwaters from the Susquehanna River. It is now among the most polluted creeks (sediment) in Pennsylvania, contributing to the Lower Susquehanna River, which feeds the Chesapeake Bay.

To achieve watershed goals the plan calls for ten types of projects ranging from stormwater retrofits, riparian and upland reforestation to trails and habitat protection.

For more information, visit the Paxton Creek website.

PCWEA was formed with the help from the Department of Environmental Protection’s Growing Greener Program, Canaan Valley Institute, Dauphin County Conservation District, Harrisburg Area Community College and other organizations.

12/9/2005