Posted: October 6, 2022
The team visits the stream in Mount Union Borough as a first step in developing their design.
A team of senior Penn State Biological Engineering students visit Hill Valley Creek in Mount Union. From Left, borough employee Aaron Estep; Ilona Ballreich, manager for Penn State's Sustainable Community Collaborative, and students Rachel Stofanak, Erick Pferdehirt, Daniel Chuckran, Austin Gaydos and Brooke Goggins. Photo by Rebecca Berdar
This article was written by Rebecca Berdar with the Huntingdon Daily News. To view the online article including additional photos go to Huntingdon Daily News.
Penn State student engineers took a walk through and along Hill Valley Creek Thursday where the stream hugs the northern corner of Rogers-Newman Park in Mount Union.
The section of the creek — between the footbridge and the new Moore Avenue bridge — is the subject of a two-semester assignment for the five students. Their goal is to develop a plan for Mount Union Borough to improve the stream bank and fish habitat, setting into motion a trickle-down effect that will enhance water quality, prevent erosion and expand angling opportunities.
Ilona Ballreich, program manager for Penn State’s Sustainable Communities Collaborative, plays the role of matchmaker between student teams and communities like Mount Union. She said the program, part of the Sustainability Institute at Penn State, provides mutually beneficial opportunities for its participants.
“Students are applying their academic knowledge in a real world setting,” Ballreich said. “It prepares them for the workforce and is a lesson on civic engagement.”
For Mount Union, the students are providing services at no cost to the borough. The resulting plan for stream bank improvements will help the borough seek funding to implement the project.
Ballreich said, as a small town with limited resources, Mount Union is the ideal community for the Sustainable Communities Collaborate. The Hill Valley Creek project is the second joint-effort between the program and Mount Union. A previous student team designed stormwater improvements for Jones and McClain streets. That project is just now wrapping up.
Thursday’s trip from State College to Mount Union marked the current group’s first visit to the project site. All five members of the team, under the direction of professor Dr. Megan Marshall, are seniors; the two-semester task is their capstone project through Penn State’s biological engineering program.
The group is using natural resource engineering principals as a guide to tackle the body of water’s specific issues.
First rule of thumb is to approach the engineering problem at its source and draw solutions from the site itself, Austin Gaydos of Landonberg, Chester County, said. The result is “engineering that is sustainable and adaptable.”
Gaydos didn’t waste time climbing down the steep embankment to reach the water. Dressed in waders and armed with a 360-degree camera, Gaydos marveled at the tiny fish that swarmed his feet while he set up the camera. He alerted classmates to the bright orange and blue crayfish that darted out of his path.
One by one, his classmates climbed down the bank toward the water. Rachel Stofanak, Brooke Goggins, Daniel Chuckran and Erick Pferdehirt took turns with the camera and made observations about the stream’s quirks, including the profusion of ancient bricks that mingle with natural stone in the creek bed and on the bank.
Aaron Estep, borough employee, served as Thursday’s guide for the group. He provided the students with a brief history lesson on the area, as well as the General Refractories brickyard that used to sit above the creek in the spot the Little League fields occupy today.
The stream quirks are what make the project both exciting and challenging, Celina Seftas, district manager for the Huntingdon County Conservation District said.
“(Hill Valley Creek) has such a connection to the whole community,” she said. “It runs through town, it runs through a park and it has a direct impact on residents when it floods.”
The Conservation District has several stream restoration projects afoot at any given time, Seftas said.
Most, she said, are focused on streams running through farm fields “where the canvas is wide open for design.”
At the bend in Hill Valley Creek, there are cement barriers, an alleyway, residential properties — an assortment of fixed objects — the student engineers will need to navigate.
Seftas said the project will include a creation of a riparian buffer — a mix of plant life — to combat soil erosion, as well as regrading of the stream bank which will improve water flow during rain events and provide better access down to the water for anglers.
The riparian buffer, she said, will serve several purposes.
It will stabilize the bank and make it less susceptible to washing downstream during big rain events. Second, the plant life will help filter the stream and keep its water clean.
For its part, the Conservation District will conduct a stream study focusing on lifeforms inhabiting the area, like the fish and crayfish that greeted Gaydos, and other creatures too small for the naked eye.
“We have a person on staff who specialize in micro invertebrate identification and stream assessment who is going to go out and look at what lives there,” Seftas said. “Its important to connect people to what lives in the stream. If you look at it quickly, you might not notice what’s there.”
Seftas said the stream study can be used to compare Hill Valley Creek to other streams in the area, and to compare the stream to itself over time to gauge its overall health.
Other components for the project include the selection of plants for the riparian buffer. Rodney Fleck, the borough’s general foreman, said he’s looking forward to this particular step, noting project partners will be putting edible plants — like pawpaw and persimmon — into the mix.
He said plants that provide winter food for songbirds and other wildlife are also a priority.
With their first on-site visit wrapped up, the engineering students will use their video and preliminary survey results to divide the project area into manageable sections so they can address each challenge the creek faces as it flows downstream.
Ballreich said students from a plant science class are next in line to tour the site, probably within the next few weeks.
