Karns to get facelift, storm-water wetlands

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

By Henry Sweets

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Flat Creek is dirty.
From the National Elk Refuge, the creek flows behind several restaurants - Dairy Queen and Wendy’s, to name a few - and then past the Teton County Fairgrounds, where horses and cows poop, and the town dumps its dirty snow after street plowing.
But the biggest influx of pollution comes from the three major street-drainage tubes, and several smaller ones, which carry silt, spit, chemicals and other undesirables from town streets to the creek.

The storm-water and snowmelt runoff are a major reason why Flat Creek was designated an impaired water body by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality.

Several projects are underway to filter the water as it enters or leaves the drainage tubes. But Shawn O’Malley, the town engineer, said they are not be enough to filter solids from the water before it reaches Flat Creek.

Town and county officials are banking on a new proposed project to divert most of Jackson’s drainage into one treatment facility in Karns Meadow as a way to alleviate some of the creek’s pollution problems.

Officials admit the proposed facility in Karns Meadow will dramatically change the look of the willow and grassland area between the Teton County Fairgrounds and the Virginian Campground. But representatives from the town and the Teton Conservation District said it will create a wetland area that promotes habitat in the field of drying, dying willows.

“This was part of the council’s vision when they bought the [Karns] property,” O’Malley said.
A cluster of manmade pools will allow the town’s storm water solids to settle before moving through a system of smaller channels and eventually into the creek. O’Malley said plans include a separate holding tank to filter gravel and larger particulate from the fairgrounds runoff, before it even makes it into the large holding pools.

A pathway around the meadow will be constructed once the functional hardware is completed. The plan has been approved in concept, but the final design must be 90 percent completed before it can go in front of the Town Council for approval, and grant money applied for. O’Malley said the project could start by early 2010.

Photo by ANDREW WYATT
A fox in Karns meadow last Monday protects one of her three cubs.

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Karns to get facelift, storm-water wetlands | Planet JH News Article: General Environment

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