Data show Va. Beach's Lake Tecumseh project works

VIRGINIA BEACH

Will Smith peered through binoculars at a dark mass bobbing in the distance on Lake Tecumseh.

"Wow!" the biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said after realizing the mass was a giant, hectic gathering of ducks and other waterfowl. "This is exactly what I was hoping for."

Speaking this week from a wind-tossed boat, Smith said no ducks would have been foraging for food and hanging out on the lake last winter - or during any winter in the past several decades, for that matter - because all the water likely would have blown into neighboring Back Bay, leaving only mudflats.

But what a difference a year makes.

After nearly a decade of negotiating and suspicion from anxious neighbors and politicians, the Fish and Wildlife Service last February completed construction of two weirs, or small dams, at the south end of the lake. Each was intended to again physically separate Back Bay from Lake Tecumseh, as had been the case for centuries before developers, with city approval, dug canals in the 1960s to connect the two water bodies.

The weirs, each about a foot tall, also are designed to block tons of sediments and other pollutants that otherwise wash down the lake through the man-made canals and foul the bay.

New scientific data confirm that the controversial project is working as advertised, even faster than planned: Back Bay is cleaner and underwater grasses are returning in velvety swaths to provide habitat for fish and crabs and to breathe oxygen into the water, and water levels in Lake Tecumseh are more consistently high, providing greater opportunities for fishing, boating and hunting and for wetlands to re-establish themselves along the shore.

The project, costing about $300,000, has been "a tremendous part" of the ongoing environmental recovery of Back Bay, said Kathy Owens, acting director of the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, in the rural southern reaches of Virginia Beach next to the Atlantic Ocean.

"Water quality has improved; grasses are growing again, which attracts more fish and waterfowl," Owens said. "We've been huge fans of the project."

Owens also lives in Sandbridge, where some residents in the north end had feared the weirs would dry up a main canal that they use to access the lake and the bay. Instead, Owens said, water levels are steadily higher now, making boating easier, safer and more predictable.

While most skeptical neighbors have come to appreciate the weirs in the first year of operations, some criticism and questions remain.

Some residents, for example, have complained that the project is increasing flooding in their low-lying neighborhoods, such as Ocean Lakes, Lagomar and along Back Bay.

But Smith, citing government studies, said the weirs have had nothing to do with the problem, that unusually wet weather, heavy tides and winds in 2011 likely are to blame.

During a site tour this week, Smith showed off another key feature that still allows boaters to transition from lake to bay and back again: a solar-powered boat lift.

The lift carries a vessel along on a small train track across an earthen berm separating Lake Tecumseh from Ashville Bridge Creek, also known as Hell's Point Creek, which flows south into Back Bay. The portage takes about five minutes, Smith said.

Historically, Lake Tecumseh was not connected to Back Bay and was separated by tangled swampy forests, some of which still dominate the landscape. The lake was called Brinson's Inlet and was open to the Atlantic Ocean.

Hurricanes closed the inlet, and it became a freshwater lake on the grounds of the Dam Neck Annex to Oceana Naval Air Station and alongside a large sewage treatment plant run by the Hampton Roads Sanitation District.

The weir project derailed in 2008 after neighbors complained that the federal government told them almost nothing about the proposal in advance. They worried they might lose water access. In shutting down the project, they enlisted the muscle of a local congresswoman and a state delegate representing southern Virginia Beach.

But Smith was not deterred and soon began reaching out to community leaders and critics to explain what his agency wanted to do and accomplish.

He also found documents from the 1950s outlining federal agriculture plans for cutting a series of canals between the lake and the bay in order to create farmland. But plans were dropped after government experts warned that sediment runoff would imperil Back Bay.

The city became interested in providing waterfront access to incoming developments in the 1960s. But, mindful of the pollution potential from man-made canals, the city installed a small stone weir to help block the flow, Smith said.

However, the weir was later removed, Smith discovered, and Back Bay began to suffer, as experts had warned.

This week, as Smith watched water trickle over the main weir into Hell's Point Creek, he reflected on a decade of protest and unease over a project he always felt was right.

"It's very satisfying," he said. "To see things change so quickly is especially gratifying."

He looked at the ducks bobbing in Lake Tecumseh, feasting on underwater grasses below, and saw wetlands again flourishing on the shoreline, protecting it from erosion.

"It's like the lake was just waiting for this," Smith said, "to return to its old self."

Scott Harper, 757-446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com