The Friends of the Wissahickon held a presentation Wednesday evening at Valley Green Inn on current and future projects in the Wissahickon Park. Speaking at the event were Friends of the Wissahickon (FOW) Executive Director Maura McCarthy and Fairmount Park Commission (FPC) Executive Director Mark Focht.

McCarthy spoke first and explained that FOW’s projects primarily revolved around the park’s 55 miles of trails. “Trails, trails, trails,” she said, detailing how trail maintenance and improvement advances the group’s mission “to preserve the natural beauty and wildness of the Wissahickon Valley and stimulate public interest therein.”

Trail use is the primary way users interact with the park, but many of the paths are overused which causes erosion and compromises the water quality in the Wissahickon Creek, which provides about one third of Philadelphia’s drinking water.

In conjunction with the Fairmount Park Commission and various other agencies, FOW ranked all of the park’s trails based on sustainability and have launched projects to improve, close, or reroute the most degraded of them.

Although construction on a trail project usually takes about three to five months, the entire process of launching a project is more like three to five years, taking into account approval, study, an assessment by engineers and plant biologists, and ongoing monitoring. Adding to the complexity, there are 15 city, state, and regional plans informing work in the Wissahickon and all projects must fit the guidelines.

McCarthy credited FOW volunteers for carrying out activities towards advancing the group’s mission, including clean-up, trail construction, invasive species removal, and new “trail ambassadors” who receive training and deploy in the park to interact with and assist users.

McCarthy then detailed some of the group’s ongoing projects. One is the improvement of the orange trail south of Bell’s Mill, which includes re-routing part of the trail as well as invasive removal and planting of native species.

Another work in progress is construction around Devil’s Pool. This heavily used area suffers from major erosion as well as graffiti and litter buildup. Some of the users “may have a different understanding of how to maintain a public space,” McCarthy quipped.

Volunteers have engaged with park users to encourage better behavior, in addition to new trail construction that discourages direct access to Cresheim Creek and the removal of two bridges that lead to jumping off points into the pool.

Other projects in the works for FOW include improving trails around the Andorra Tree House which have been degraded by storm water, addressing erosion and sedimentation in four of the park’s gullies, and seven more miles of trails nominated for improvements. Some of the money for gully improvement came from a Merck settlement for $780,000 after a tetra cyanide spill in 1996.

Mark Focht took the floor to explain a number of projects in the Wissahickon undertaken by the Fairmount Park Commission. They include manure containment at Northwestern Stables and restoration at Houston Meadow. The meadow project aims to return 14 bird species that historically populated the area, improve breeding for seven more, and remove invasive plants.

Also FPC is taking on five more gully improvement projects in addition to the four being worked on by FOW.

Other work ongoing includes erosion and storm water control at Allen’s Lane and Cathedral Road.

The agency has recently been granted nearly $1.8 million through federal stimulus funds through the Forest Service which will be applied to ecological restoration, forest canopy assessment, and job training in arboriculture and eco-restoration. In the Wissahickon specifically the funds will go towards improvements at Carpenter’s Woods and Andorra Meadow aimed towards restoring native plants.

Finally Focht cited a number of additional projects in the Wissahickon run by the Philadelphia Water Department and the Army Corps of Engineers, including restoration work at Wise’s Mill, Bell’s Mill, St. Martins, Valley Green, and Gorgas Lane. The Engineers are also working on fish passage at several of the dams along the Wissahickon Creek.

Focht reiterated that all the work was ongoing despite the city budget cuts, and that the new Parks and Recreation department takes seriously its mission to be the nation’s premier park and recreation system. “This is not an empty statement,” Focht emphasized.

“The current restoration work is unparalleled in the city of Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania.”

For more information on projects and other events visit the Friends of the Wissahickon website at www.fow.org and the Fairmount Park website at http://www.fairmountpark.org.