Little Harpeth River in Brentwood &

Little Harpeth River in Edwin Warner Park, Nashville

March 15, 2003

The Volunteer River Restoration Corps Does Two Projects in One Day

It was an amazing Saturday morning with two simultaneous river restoration projects on the Little Harpeth River. These projects both were HRWA projects, but each had different partners and each was successful because of so many people.  These are the kinds of projects that are truly going to build public support for our rivers, bring good will, and enable people to see real change. It is through these efforts that we build support to work on those long term, technical and complex challenges of re-directing business as usual toward smarter decision-making.

John McFadden worked hard to get all these projects going. Gwen Kanies was critical to managing the Volunteer River Restoration Corps and to onsite coordination.  With a grant from TWRA we designed special T-shirts for these projects!  Thanks to Rebecca Key for her donated time to work on designing these on such short notice. 

Little Harpeth River, Tower Park at Concord Road:
Girl Scout Troop 1168, Amy Green’s 5th grade juniors and Sarah Bass' Troop 1704, 3rd grade brownies, each with a parent, planted close to 1000 trees in several areas to recreate a buffer zone along the Little Harpeth River.  It was done in 2 hours!!  This was a joint project with the City of Brentwood Parks and Engineering Department.

Little Harpeth in Warner Parks at the picnic area number 11:
This project was a joint effort with Metro Parks and the Cumberland River Compact.  Gary Moody of Jen-Hill Construction worked with Metro Parks to design paths from the picnic area to view the river, then the rest of the bank was re-planted and will be fenced off to let the buffer re-grow.  It was phenomenal to see 30 volunteers hard at work. 

There were folks from the Middle TN Fly Fishermen's Association, 8 students from Belmont (via our VRRC member who is a professor there), and people who read about the project off the Team Green and other web sites. Many people were there who are our Volunteer Corps members (three from Blue Ridge Mountain Sports), people from contacts at the Warner Park Nature Center, Gary Moody's very able staff, Metro's own Deb Beasley who was coordinating everyone, and the Williamson AM reporter-also a VRRC member!   An Eagle Scout project will build the fence. 

It is just amazing what can get done with coordination of all the willingness of people who want to help and will volunteer their skills and time! 

THANKS AGAIN TO EVERYONE!