HUBBLE CREEK STABILIZATION PLAN MOVES TOWARD CONTRACT

JACKSON -- A contract could be let as early as September for the first project in the Hubble Creek Watershed Improvement Plan.

Dave Owen, a district conservationist for the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service, said the contract will be for the first of seven planned grade stabilization structures to be built along the creek in an attempt to slow its velocity. The structure consisting of pilings and rock will be built south of Gordonville on County Road 228 near a bridge imperiled by erosion.

The bridge built for $72,000 will cost the county about $250,000 to rebuild.

The grade stabilization structures and other parts of the plan are attempts to curtail erosion in a water system a federal geologist studying the creek called one of the most unstable he has ever seen.

Other parts of the plan include:

* Construction of as many as 50 detention storage structures in the upper regions of the watershed

* Passage of stormwater detention ordinances for new development by both the City of Jackson and Cape Girardeau County.

* Restoration of riparian buffers along Hubble Creek and its tributaries.

* Restoration of vegetative buffers across the Hubble Creek floodplain.

About 15 people attended a public meeting Thursday at North Cape County Park to hear how the plan is progressing.

Owen said about $4.1 million is needed to complete the entire plan, the grade stabilization structures accounting for more than half the amount. About $237,000 has been acquired for the projects through the Clean Water Act, and a $750,000 state grant has been applied for.

The plan's goal is to get 25 percent of the funding locally, 40 percent from the state and 35 percent from the federal government.

Brad Pobst of the Missouri Department of Conservation outlined for the group of mostly farmers a program that will pay them to create riparian buffer zones alongside streams. Called the federal Conservation Reserve Program, it will pay Missouri farmers up to $79 per acre to be in the program, plus $10 per acre up front for signing up.

Pobst showed slides of erosion along Southeast Missouri streams that he said riparian buffers could have slowed or prevented. Trees 100 feet deep are needed to stabilize most stream banks, Pobst said. "What I like to see is wild and woolly."

The Hubble Creek Watershed Improvement Plan has been developed by a committee formed four years ago by the Cape Girardeau County Commission.