Resilience

This is a story of connections. 

Resilience requires an understanding of the various connections that influence our everyday lives – our infrastructure, the natural environment, local and regional policy, risk, and economics. 

As defined by the National Academy of Sciences, “Resilience is the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events.” Resilience is an important concept in terms of our ecosystems and natural resources, infrastructure, economy, public health and safety, overall quality of life, and our ability to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Each of these areas are closely connected, and resilience planning at the watershed scale can help to inform smart investments that support some or all these needs. 

Now, more than ever, resilience planning is critical for a host of reasons. Throughout the northeast region, including the communities that make up the Chiques Creek Watershed, our infrastructure is aging – often well beyond its design life and insufficient for the demands of modern society. Pennsylvania’s infrastructure received a C-minus in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2022 Pennsylvania Infrastructure Report Card. 

These issues are compounded by the impacts of climate change. As the atmosphere warms, it can carry more moisture.  And warming oceans can release more moisture to developing storms that disproportionately impact the Northeast. The following charts from The Fifth National Climate Assessment illustrate the increase in heavy precipitation events in the Northeast since 1958. 

These trends in regional precipitation events, as well as global ocean and atmospheric warming trends, are well-established, and they have an implication for watersheds like ours:  that we might want to build resilience into our environment to reduce the potential destructive impacts of storms like those we have experienced, and those we will experience in the future.

That said, the importance of resilient systems is nothing new to the Chiques Creek Watershed. There is a long history of problematic flooding in our local communities. In 2018 the Susquehanna River Basin Commission and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers teamed up to develop the Chiques Creek Flood Resiliency Study. The study characterizes flood risk, prioritizes opportunities for flood resiliency alternatives, and also considers them in the context of achieving water quality improvements. In the Chiques Creek Watershed, we are fortunate to have a diversity of expertise conducting monitoring and research that can inform resilience planning. 

For nearly 25 years, the Chiques Creek Watershed Alliance has promoted good stewardship of our land and waterways and we look forward to supporting resilient solutions to the watershed's present and future challenges.

Below are several additional resources to inform about, and aid in planning for, resilience.

FEMA has a flood map viewer  in which you can enter a zip code or zoom to a location, then click on the FIRM panel label over this area and select the option to download a graphic of the map.  This downloads a zip file which you can unzip. Look in the unzipped folder for the .png image which is the local flood risk map with annotations and explanations. A Read-Me file provides additional explanation.

Stream Cams
The Susquehanna River Basin Council has installed stream cams at various locations to remotely monitor stream levels in locations that are particularly impacted by flooding, and which can warn downstream population centers of impending flooding. 

There are 2 cams in the Chiques Creek Watershed at a particularly important site, the White Oak dam / bridge.  Links are provided to these cams rather than live embeds since these are not HTTPS sites.  

Looking east at White Oak dam / bridge

Looking north  (upstream) of the White Oak dam / bridge

Stream gages

The Lancaster County Emergency Management Agency (LCEMA) has stream gages and weather monitoring stations at various locations throughout the county.

One is located on the Chiques Creek at Hamaker Road, just downstream of the White Oak site, and immediately upstream of Manheim Borough. You can select to view a custom date range, say for year to date to see longer trends.

Another is located on the Little Chiques Creek at Mount Joy

Continuous in-stream monitoring probes

The Susquehanna River Basin Council maintains continuous in-stream monitoring probes on the Little Chiques Creek as well as on the Chiques Creek.  Heavier precipitation events often cause temporary shifts in stream temperature and chemistry, and of course spikes in turbidity. 

The United States Geological Survey maintains a "super gage" on the Chiques Creek near Marietta.  In addition to an extensive array of temperature and chemistry readings, this site provides stream gage height and flow rate ("discharge") as well. 

The Penn State Extension Southeast Ag Research and Extension Center (SEAREC) Weather Station 

For information on current and historical conditions, though not stream data.