HAMPTON — Clayton County Water Authority’s annual Wetlands & Watershed Festival is Saturday, Nov. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at its Melvin L. Newman Wetlands Center on Freeman
Iowa Department of Natural Resources issued the following announcement on Dec. 4.
Silver Creek, a warm water creek winding through Clayton County, had a muddy outlook until a community-led effort helped clear things up.
The stream, a tributary of northeast Iowa’s Turkey River, was taking on almost 15,000 tons of sediment each year, all washing into the creek from the surrounding 18,000 acres of land that drain into it. The extra dirt and sediment, along with the nutrients that wash along with it, were causing problems for the fish and aquatic life in the stream, like insects, snails, mussels and crayfish.
Sediment in waterways can completely bury or fill in gaps around many stream habitat types, like rocks and gravel, that are important to survival for many types of aquatic life. Sediment can fill in spaces between rocks, making this important habitat less suitable for invertebrates and fish, which use the spaces for feeding, shelter, spawning and egg incubation.