Crews hit the road this week to begin creating a database of conditions at culverts, bridges, dams, weirs and other manmade structures in Northwest Indiana streams.
Their information will help the Indiana Department of Transportation and others know whether the culverts are working properly or need to be replaced.
Often, when roads were put in there was no concern about fish and animals and their life cycles, Ducks Unlimited Regional GIS Manager Jes Skillman said.
A trout might swim upstream, hit a culvert that it can’t get through or is too dark and scary, then turn around, she said.
“That has an impact for the trout or the fish that might have to travel to complete their life cycle,” Skillman said.
Barriers to streams’ flow can also affect upstream habitats and water quality, too.
“Our job here today is to go and measure these culverts and see how different they are from the natural reach of the river,” she said.
Among the considerations was whether there was a fence in front of the culvert that literally stops a fish from going through. At the culvert being assessed at Meadowbrook Nature Preserve where the training took place Friday, a logjam blocked fish from entering.
Ducks Unlimited geospatial analyst Maddie Holm stressed safety for the crews. Entering a culvert isn’t smart, she said. Nor was entering streams where the water is higher than the knee, or the water is flowing rapidly.
“We don’t want anyone slipping or falling or going downstream,” she said.
Volunteers used binders and laminated instruction sheets to help them enter the information into an online database.
For Northwest Indiana, that would take a lot of work. Skillman figured there are 10,000 culverts in Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties. Surveying conditions at all of them will take a long time.
For the first weekend of the two-year pilot project begun Friday, the participants hit high-priority areas.
Those included culverts and other structures associated with rivers that might be used by trout, and that are close to public lands.
Assessing a culvert takes time. Does the water take a sharp bend to enter the culvert? Does the culvert impede the flow of water? How wide is it? How tall? How far is the top of the culvert from the surface of the roadway? How fast is the water flowing? How deep is the water? All these and more measurements and observations are recorded.
“It’s new to people, so we’re going to go more slowly,” Skillman said. “I think the more we do, the faster we’ll get.”
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
