Sediment Removal and Restoration of Town Branch Creek in Russellville, Kentucky

From 1997 through 2000, approximately 240,000 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment and soils were removed from a 3.5 mile reach of Town Branch Creek in Russellville, Kentucky. Town Branch is a relatively small creek (i.e., about 20 – 50 feet wide, 4 –10 cfs), flowing through both urban and agricultural areas. This paper will describe the removal and restoration efforts employed along with the challenges encountered and overcome. More specifically, the methods used to remove and restore the creek bed (i.e., sediment and bank soils) and floodplain soils will be discussed. A combination of both mechanical and hydraulic methods were used to remove all sediment to the extent practical, with soils removed to certain PCB concentrations based on land use. Additional removal and restoration efforts included bypass of the creek flow to facilitate removal "in the dry", habitat restoration within the creek bed, as well as restoration of the riparian zone in the floodplain. Challenges which were encountered included difficulties in obtaining access to third party properties, the unprecedented scope of restoring the habitat (in drought conditions) which was inevitably destroyed during removal efforts, the "flashy" nature of the creek flows, as well as the irregular bedrock creek bottom in karst terrain, to name just a few. Observations and "lessons learned" from the project will be presented along with recommendations for those faced with similar projects in the future.