ELKIN, N.C. - A Mitchell River watershed-restoration project has improved water quality and repaired damage from 2018's Hurricane Michael, as well as restoring habitat for trout and freshwater mussels.

The hurricane caused the river to choke up with tons of fine, sandy sediment. Darrell Westmoreland, chief executive of North State Environmental, who led the project construction along with Resource Institute, said that caused extensive erosion that also affected local landowners.

"It's just super important to stabilize our streams because when we don't stabilize them, we allow them to erode; that adds quite a bit of sediment to our water supply," he said, "and all that is a high cost to the public, because our water treatment plants have to filter that out."

Westmoreland said the project will repair and restore 1,500 feet of stream, and anticipates planting more than 500 trees and more than 1,600 live stakes and shrubs. He said the riparian plantings also will sequester carbon, which helps combat the effects of climate change in the region.

Westmoreland said the 10 inches of rain dumped onto the region during Hurricane Michael caused a historic dam to burst, affecting the habitat of brook floaters, a species of freshwater mussel in the stream.

"The impacts of the dam breaching left a lot of vertical banks," he said, "so it was adding a lot of sediment and silt to the stream, and a lot of loss of habitat."

Charles Anderson, project development manager at Resource Institute, explained that stream restoration can help ensure these areas are better equipped to handle future extreme weather events and boost flood resiliency.

"One of the things that we do in all of our projects in restoring a river system is reconnect the floodplain," he said. "By reconnecting the floodplain, we're giving a chance for the river to spread itself out, thereby going downstream with less force and impact."

The North Carolina Division of Environmental Quality provided funding for the work. So far, Surry County has completed 36 river-restoration projects, enhancing nearly 28 miles of stream in the region in partnership with Resource Institute.

Federal officials ordered limits this week on how much water is released by Glen Canyon Dam, in order to maintain sufficient levels to generate hydropower, but conservationists warn time is running out to develop long-term solutions to the West's dwindling water supplies.

The Bureau of Reclamation is cutting its release from Lake Powell into the Colorado River by a half-million acre feet over the next year. The move is aimed at keeping the water level above 3,400 feet, the minimum needed to drive Glen Canyon Dam's hydropower turbines.

Taylor Hawes, Colorado River program director for The Nature Conservancy, said while the move buys some time, stakeholders need to develop long-term solutions to dwindling water flows.

"These announcements are just continuing to show how dire the situation is," Hawes contended. "The longer we wait, the less options we have. There really is a sense of urgency to not waste the nine to ten months that we've just bought ourselves and to continue finding solutions and implementing them quickly."

Hawes pointed out decades of high temperatures, low runoff and depleted reservoirs has had a profound effect on the water and power customers in the West, who rely on resources from the Colorado River Basin.

Hydropower generated by Glen Canyon Dam serves customers in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming and Nebraska, as well as the Navajo Nation. Hawes noted cutting the flow from Lake Powell means less water in Lake Mead, the primary water supply for millions of customers in Arizona, California, Nevada and parts of Mexico.

"It will mean less water going down to Lake Mead, which will be impacting Lake Mead and the Lower Basin states to some degree," Hawes acknowledged. "The goal of these operational rules, though, is that it will be what they call operationally neutral. Ultimately, there's less water in the system."

Hawes added as long as the annual snowpack in the Rocky Mountains remains below historic levels, water supplies will continue to drop.

"Everyone has to tighten their belts, but at the same time, we have to look out into the future and make sure the system is sustainable," Hawes urged. "We have to find that long-term solution that allow all water users and everyone who depends on the river system to adapt to less water."

The Great Lakes, Puget Sound and other notable watersheds are afforded massive federal support to coordinate and fund pollution-reduction efforts. But the Mississippi River is not, and clean-water advocates contended a troubling report should spur action.

The Mississippi, which flows past ten states including Iowa, recently landed on American Rivers' ten most endangered rivers list for 2022.

Olivia Dorothy, Upper Mississippi River basin director for American Rivers, said the major river is at a crossroads. Despite existing programs and volunteer efforts to shield it from pollution such as agriculture runoff, she argued the patchwork approach is not enough.

"They're not all marching to the beat of the same drum," Dorothy asserted. "What we hope and what we've seen the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) do in other watersheds, the EPA does a really, really great job getting everybody working in lockstep."

Congress is being asked to approve the Mississippi River Restoration and Resilience Initiative, which would provide around $300 million annually to aid a more coordinated response. Some skeptics have floated concerns about adding regulations, but supporters countered it does not come with mandates and would not take over existing restoration programs.

Alicia Vasto, program associate director for the Iowa Environmental Council, said threats such as farm fertilizer pollution not only affect communities along the Mississippi River, but other regions as well because of the numerous tributaries around the state.

"Anything that we do to protect the Mississippi River is also going to protect our, our local waterways and improve things for Iowans," Vasto contended.

Nutrients flow down the Mississippi to the so-called "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico. At the state level, Vasto emphasized the report should prompt policymakers to enhance Iowa's Nutrient Reduction Strategy.

The Council said it should include mandatory participation among farmers, so long as it is tailored to meet the size of each producer's operation.

Researchers at Wayne State University are developing an alternative method of monitoring groundwater for toxins.

The process is typically labor-intensive and expensive; it requires installing wells, which can cost local public health departments millions. Or with phytoscreening, researchers can test plant tissue for contaminants from the water they absorb. But some contaminants, such as volatile organic compounds, often aren't concentrated enough to be detected in stems or leaves.

One of the lead researchers, Dr. Glen Hood, an assistant professor of biological sciences, noted they can test galls - the places that plant tissue swells when insects lay their eggs in certain plants.

"If galls serve as vacuums to suck up all of the nutrients so the gall itself can grow, maybe those pollutants and toxins would be caught in that water," he said, "and they could serve as places in the plant where higher concentrations of toxins, or pollutants or chemicals, are accumulating."

Hood said they're working to understand which types of plants and gall-forming insects work well to test for different types of contaminants, and if there's a better time to remove and test the galls. He noted that two undergraduate researchers have been instrumental: Sarah Black, working currently in the lab, and Connor Socrates, who's since graduated from WSU.

Another lead resercher, Dr. Shirley Papuga, associate professor of environmental science and geology, said she hopes this new method for testing groundwater can help with seasonal monitoring in settings such as a growing plume of dioxane - a carcinogen - in Ann Arbor, or a "green ooze zone" in Madison Heights.

"I think one of the other things that we can link to are some of the public-health issues that are pervasive in Detroit, like the preterm births," she said. "We can look at and identify overlaps between parts of the community that may have certain public health issues, and areas having these contaminants in their plant tissue."

Since this method makes use of plant material above the ground, Papuga said, it may be something people can better see and appreciate.

"Galls, even though they're this parasitic, tumor-like growth on plants, they're sort of charismatic and people are excited about identifying them," she said. "And so, it's a another way to get the public, citizen scientists, interested and excited about an environmental problem."