Along Mill Creek, Amish do the right thing.

“Do you see the bottom in there?” says Dave Putnam, pointing toward a section of Mill Creek through the heart of Amish country near Bird-in-Hand. “You could never see the bottom before. You ask these Amish guys — they’ve never seen the bottom in their lifetimes.”“It was dead water,” agrees Marvin Esh, one of those Amishmen. “You couldn’t tell the creek was flowing and there was scum on top.”

In front of Putnam, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a Trackhoe was anchored in the middle of the stream, lifting and placing 2-ton boulders into an upstream “V.”

The rock vane, as it’s called, will redirect the flow of the stream away from the banks where it has been eroding farmland and into the center, where the stronger current carrying oxygen and submerged boulders will attract fish.

It’s just the latest stream-improvement project of the Mill Creek Preservation Association.

Besides being the newest of the county’s 15 citizen watershed groups, it’s the only one in Pennsylvania formed by Amish.

The chairman is Amish. So is the vice chairman and the treasurer. Though the group is open to anyone, the lone English on the board is John E. Smucker II, whose farm sits in the midst of Amish farms.

The group, officially formed in 2003, meets monthly and publishes a newsletter three times a year. They recently named an unnamed tributary to Mill Creek and hold a fishing derby each spring that attracts dozens of families along the banks of the stream that ties them together.

Mostly, though, the group tries to inspire landowners along the stream, which runs from the Welsh Mountains to the Conestoga near Willow Street, to better their strip of streamfront.

The most dramatic improvements have come from a simple step: erecting fences along the banks to keep cattle and livestock from pooping in the stream and crumbling the banks.

Inside the newly created buffer, vegetation quickly flourishes, attracting wildlife and filtering soil and manure that would run off fields into the water. Additional plantings of trees stabilize the banks and provide shade for fish.

In the last three years, the group has enticed more than 15 landowners to fence off livestock. Three years ago, on Esh’s farm, a 60-year-old low-head dam that had halted fish migration and stockpiled silt was demolished while more than two dozen Plain Sect farmers looked on.

Though there is much work to do, there already are dramatic signs of a more healthy stream.

Ducks have returned to the now-grassy stream in such numbers that the Amish hunt them. Esh has seen a pair of eagles hanging around. Kids are now allowed to frolic in the stream.

And the biggest surprise of all: trout.

“When we first started, we were just trying to grow ducks,” says Putnam. “We never dreamed we would get trout.” The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and Paradise Sportsmen’s Association already stock trout in some sections.

With the discovery that Mill Creek is fed by a number of limestone spring tributaries, Putnam and others are convinced that eventually at least some tribs and even portions of Mill Creek itself will support a reproducing population of wild trout.

The Mill Creek watershed has been the focus of state and federal cleanup efforts for 20 years due to intense runoff problems that figure prominently into the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay.

A cattle-fencing project launched 15 years ago here was the first in the nation.

The formation of a watershed group composed of the very landowners who live there is proving instrumental in carrying on that work.

“It’s remarkable, considering that they didn’t have a lot of background in this,” marvels Matt Kofroth, watershed specialist with the Lancaster County Conservation District.

“They’ve really taken the reins here and taken off with it.”

So far, the group has received a $100,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Protection, another $49,000 from the local Ressler Mill Foundation and $22,200 from the federal U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under its Partners for Fish and Wildlife program.

The inspiration for the group was Henry Beiler, an Amish farmer who lives near Leola.

Beiler was working as a liaison between Amish and conservation agencies in the Octoraro watershed when he saw the opportunity for a similar effort closer to home.

“To me, this is important that each person work to make his part of the county a better place than when we came here,” he says. “We’ve only begun to fight,” he says of the Mill Creek group, of which he is a board member.

“There’s yet a lot of work.”

The group expects to soon be designated as a nonprofit group. That will open up tax-deductible contributions and more grants from both the government and private groups such as the Izaak Walton League. The group also will then make a push for expanded membership.

It is hoped the rock vanes, mud sills, cattle crossings, streambank fencing and plantings going in will inspire other landowners to become better stewards of their land.

Says Smucker, who owns the Bird-in-Hand Family Restaurant, “We talk a lot about leaving the environment in a better condition than we found it and that’s one of our chief goals. We work at trying to improve it for the next generation.”

“I’m really excited,” says Putnam, who has been working along Mill Creek for 15 years.

“It’s like a tree growing — and now it’s finally bearing fruit.”

Published with permission of Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. This article originally appeared in the March 21, 2006 Lancaster New Era.

3/31/2006