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[Music playing]

Faith: In Southern Wisconsin and


especially in urban areas, there's road


crossings every couple hundred feet and


even in the rural sections, we have road


crossings every mile and these could be


major fish barriers and there's a lot of


them across the States. Tom, in this


particular setting you use some very


innovative techniques, to help fish pass


through a particularly long culvert, do


you want to talk about those a little


bit and explain what was done?


Tom: Sure. The challenges were that,


yes- the culvert had to be extended


because the slopes had to be more


gradual and safer for roadway, for


requirements along the project new


roads. And it's because of that, the


culvert had to be about a hundred feet


longer. But since it's a new culvert, we


had a lot more alternatives. We


negotiated the size, and the size in


this case was a mixture between trying


to provide an adequate bankfull channel


as well as pass the hundred year flood


or the one percent chance probability


flooding event. And in addition to that,


we were able to embed the culvert so


what we're standing here on is of


course, aggregate filled mixed with some


fieldstone boulders to provide a more


stream simulation, a more natural


channel through this culvert, to


providing areas for resting areas and


macroinvertebrates and food base and


such.


And then, in addition to that, the wing


walls are always a real challenge


because in this case it's hard to see


but there's a concrete apron here in the


wing walls and it extends all the way


out. And, so typically, that's not part


of the stream designs. You can


immediately have an impediment for


passage if that channel is allowed to go


out 25 feet in this case, when the


channel really is about six foot, ten


foot wide. And so we were able to


recreate the channel you can see around


us here, on top of the concrete apron as


well as tied in with the wetland


mitigation design. So, time will tell


how well this functions with the higher


flowing events but we did survive the


high flooding event this past July I


believe. So this whole site was


underneath water. So it functioned very


well.


Faith: Yes, and I think that had like a


1 in 500 chance of occurrence in any


year. So it's a really big event. So


when this has water flowing through it


after rainfall events and such, those


boulders, do they give the fish a little


bit of resting space as higher


velocities are passing over them so they


can make their way up the culvert?


Tom: Right, yes, absolutely. And it also


helps provide some larger substrate to


keep, you can't just fill it with the


smaller stuff. And it tries to key it


all together and there's one cohesive


unit through the whole length of the


culvert and helps give it strength for


those higher flow events that can get


pretty erosive.


[Music playing]


[End of Audio]

Title: Challenges of culvert crossings and design in stream restoration projects, County G I-94 Interchange, Wisconsin

Description:

Faith Fitzpatrick (U.S. Geological Survey) and Tom Slawski (Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission) discuss how culverts and culvert openings can be designed to maintain fish passage. Special design considerations can be given to wing walls, concrete aprons, and substrate.

Location: Milwaukee, WI, USA

Date Taken: 11/17/2010

Length: 3:25

Video Producer: Douglas A. Harned , National Water-Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA), USGS, North Carolina Water Science Center, Raleigh, NC

Note: This video has been released into the public domain by the U.S. Geological Survey for use in its entirety. Some videos may contain pieces of copyrighted material. If you wish to use a portion of the video for any purpose, other than for resharing/reposting the video in its entirety, please contact the Video Producer/Videographer listed with this video. Please refer to the USGS Copyright section for how to credit this video.

Additional Video Credits:

Faith Fitzpatrick: Scriptwriter, Narrator, Scientist Consultant

Gerard McMahon: Producer

Douglas Harned: Producer, Video, Editor

Alan Cressler: Video

Luke McMahon: Video

Tom Slawski (Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission)

File Details:

• Quicktime
• Flash Video
• W3C Timed-Text captions file
• YouTube version *
• Text transcript

Suggest an update to the information/tags?

Tags: AquaticEcology CountyG DouglasHarned EUSE Ecosystems FaithFitzpatrick Habitat Hydrology I-94 NAWQA StreamRehabilitation StreamRestoration USGS Urbanization WIDOT WaterQuality WaterResourceManagement Wisconsin WisconsinDNR