Stroubles Creek

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Stroubles Creek runs through the town of Blacksburg, the Virginia Tech campus, and through Montgomery County, Virginia until it empties into the New River. Most of the sections of Stroubles Creek that flow through Blacksburg and on the Virginia Tech campus are piped underground, while the portion that flows through Montgomery County is daylighted. Stroubles Creek has been designated an impaired waterway since 2002.[1]

About the Watershed

Stream

Stroubles Creek flows into the New River, which then flows into the Kanawha River, to the Ohio River, which flows into the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. The stream flows approximately 9.2 miles (15 km). There are two branches that merge at the Virginia Tech Duck Pond: the Main Branch and Webb Branch.[1]

Watershed

The Stroubles Creek watershed, a subwatershed of the New River watershed, is 14,336 acres. There is a lower and upper Stroubles Creek watershed, with the Virginia Tech Duck Pond acting as a divider between the two. The Upper Stroubles Creek watershed is approximately 2,000 acres, and it is heavily impacted by urbanization in Blacksburg and on the Virginia Tech Campus. The Lower Stroubles Creek watershed travels through some urbanized areas on the western side of the VT campus, but then it flows mostly through rural lands until it reaches the New River. The watershed is located in karst terrain, with limestone formations, sinkholes, and natural springs.[1] Additionally, the streambed is made up of cobbles and pebbles with alluvia-floodplain deposits (stratified unconsolidated silt, clay, and sand with lenses).[2]

History

Stroubles Creek was settled in 1740. It acted as a water source for the settlers; the New River is used today as the main Virginia Tech water source for the area. In 1798, the town of Blacksburg was founded. In 1851, the Preston and Olin Institute (now Virginia Tech) was opened.[3] In 1937, the Virginia Tech Drillfield was constructed, which resulted in the main branch of Stroubles Creek being culverted underground .[4] The Virginia Tech Duck Pond was also created at this time when a dam was constructed where the two branches merged.[1]

Pollution Timeline

  • 1800s to 1930s, coal mining wastewater contaminated the watershed
  • 1970 to 1978, chemical waste from Virginia Tech chemistry labs was directly discharged into the Duck Pond
  • 1985, kerosene was spilled into the Duck Pond[5]
  • 2006, 50 to 80 gallons of fuel oil was spilled into the stream from a local hardware stores’ 275 gallon above-ground storage tank

The Clean Water Act in the 1970s prompted the VA Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to monitor the lower portion of the stream (downstream of the Duck Pond). The DEQ classified lower Stroubles Creek as benthically impaired in 1996 and 1998.[6] In 2002, Stroubles Creek was included as an impaired waterway in the Virginia total maximum daily load (TMDL) list of impaired waterways. The Virginia Tech Biological Systems Engineering department (BSE) conducted a study on the stream in 2003,[7] and a TMDL implementation plan was completed in 2006 by the Center for TMDL and Watershed Studies through the BSE department.[8]


See also

References

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External links

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