(Written a while ago)

As localities try to figure out how to assess storm water fees on property owners, I’d like to share my childhood experiences with a stream where I grew up. My own opinion on the efficacy of this future tax is that it will do little to quell ongoing sedimentation since erosion and development (any human use of the land) are inextricably linked. That said, it should be a natural thought for people to want to conserve (detain) rain that falls on their properties. Water is life.

A huge part of my world, (until the moment I set foot in a dorm) was a feeder stream to Accotink Creek (in Northern Virginia) which ran through my front yard. That stream was both the natural and man-made destination of runoff from heavy rain events that fell on roughly 80 upstream acres.

And, as has been repeated in many-a-community, it was a lazy stream until the houses were built. That stream and I would come to share one important trait over the years: As I grew, it did too.

Before I was born, my folks bought the lot that, today, the local government describes as an “average buildable lot”. My dad would have chuckled and just shook his head at that one.

It was the least accommodating lot on which to build in the entire neighborhood because, except for the hillside to the rear where a house could be built (with enough earth-moving equipment), it was floodplain. Not the 100-year type, or 50-, or even 10-year. It was most every year and sometimes twice.

I had the perfect perch on the balcony of our elevated house to witness what seemed to me to be a regularly occurring, natural disaster. And it was happening on our property…in our front yard!

Of course, I did not know that it was mainly a “man-made” natural disaster…not that it would have mattered. Floods were exciting and a wonderment. Though, I would be a bit put out when it happened at night. Shining a flashlight down below to see if I could see anything was my only hope.

The water would start to back up onto the neighbor’s property across the street because the underground culvert that traversed the road had limited capacity. The pressure from the backed-up water manifested itself by turning our side of the culvert into a fire hose. Thus, this stream that my elementary-aged brothers could jump across on the day they moved in, would—in a few short years—require (to a child’s eye) an Evel Knievel-type feat to get to the other side.

And it didn’t help that much of the stream on our property was cleared of soil-holding vegetation (grass doesn’t count). It is what many people did, and still do, unless there’s a law against it. You domesticate (clear) as much of your property as you care to, including the parts up to the edge of the water course (aka buffer removal).

The shame of it is that, nowadays, the clearing is often done for no good reason.

Landowners might want to extirpate nature from their properties because they may fear it (because they don’t understand it), or the neighbors may make snide remarks about the way a wilder-looking yard looks, or there may even be unenlightened laws against such a yard.

Or, if you clear it for the kids, they end up not using it much because they don’t spend their lives playing outdoors the way children used to.

But when I was a child, that flood plain had all manner of activity.

There were plenty of friends around to take part in football, soccer, badminton, army…you name it. In other words, what today would be considered bad for the environment (clearing along waterways) was, at least, not for naught. The cleared area got used…big time!

But the stream, unfortunately, got abused sometimes. In the autumn, after playing tag along the paths we had drawn with our rakes, the leaves would be deposited into the pooled area of the stream that had been created by the business end of the culvert. The entire surface of the water would be covered up for long periods, smothering (I now realize) the home of water animals trying to survive in there.

On occasion I would set plastic model boats ablaze as they floated. Other days I’d get it into my head to eradicate all of the water striders skating on the pool by throwing creek stones at them. Consequently, my dad was impressed with how few batters I walked as a little league pitcher.

Sensitivity to wildlife is usually not a boy’s strong point. In fact, developing sensitivity to, or knowledge of, wildlife or the environment is not, in general, on most people’s to-do list. Luckily, change can come upon anyone.

Today, insects, including water striders, are accorded high status around the house. They have the run of our property if they want. And, when an insect manages to breach our climate-controlled environment, it rarely meets its doom. Most are scooped up into a container and put outside.

It is only recently that I have learned enough to interpret some of my childhood wildlife sightings along the stream. Two snakes that were intertwined among exposed tree roots, it turns out, were not fighting. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

Those chimneys along the banks of the stream that I now know are the doings of crayfish, were, as a child, of great concern to me. I expected, at any moment, that one of those giant bees that frequented our azalea blossoms would come zooming up the stack and find me. Why I thought this I do not know.

A person’s perception of wildlife by way of friends, acquaintances, or the media hasn’t changed much since I was a child. Fear sells and sticks in our minds.

One day, I and others witnessed what appeared to be eels hanging in the rivulets created in the shallows of the flowing water. Since we deemed them as such it would have been a danger to try to touch them because one of us could get electrocuted. (Jacques Cousteau was becoming popular at about that time. The watery part of the planet held both beauty and danger.)

Today, after some investigation, those eels fit the description of fish known as Brook Lampreys. They were probably spawning…in my front yard! Unfortunately, things have degraded along waterways to the extent that sightings of these animals are now extremely rare.

Evacuating runoff away from neighborhoods as quickly as possible has always been planned into development. Except, the velocity of this water is trouble for the Bay because of its erosive tendencies upstream.

Therefore, we have to try to retain and detain as much of this water on our own properties as possible to both reduce and slow down the flood waters. This could be accomplished through changes in the home landscape.

And, like this and other environmental issues that need remedial action, if we don’t try this at home, the government may try it for us—which may end up as not the most desired outcome for the property owner.