American Society of Civil Engineers, Reston, Virginia. CHANNEL AND WATERSHED ASSESSMENT – PRIORITIZING STREAM PROJECTS IN PENNSYLVANIA

Many stream restoration projects continue to be implemented without prior watershed-wide appraisals of stream and catchment conditions. This is often not the best way to allocate scarce funding resources for long-term benefits and may also encourage project failures. It is generally advantageous to first understand the most critical issues in a watershed before pursuing individual projects. This catchment-scale view has been promoted by the Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) in various regions of the state as a means of encouraging the completion of watershed and channel appraisals before initiating restoration design and construction. The fact that most restoration projects will continue to be conducted in a piecemeal fashion only underscores the need for a good understanding of watershed conditions potentially influencing restoration efforts. Assessments typically delineate individual stream reaches by stream type and rate these according to degree of impairment. However, this has little value in such dynamic environments unless channel segments are subsequently prioritized for repairs. This allows both the most serious problems to be tackled first and high-quality stream corridors at risk to be identified for possible preservation. Needed restoration efforts for improved stream function will rarely be confined to the stream channel network, and repairs in upland areas may be of higher priority than work along the channel. Useful assessments should also provide reasonably detailed and realistic prescriptions for repairing identified problems in the prioritized channel segments