Folding chairs, scooters and giant invasive snails are among the things that have been found in the muck at the bottom of a 3-mile stretch of the San Antonio River after it was drained for the first time in four years.
This week’s partial draining of the river, overseen by the city’s Transportation and Capital Improvements and Center City Development and Operations departments, aims to clear the river bottom of debris. It’s also providing an opportunity for biologists to pluck the troublesome Amazonian apple snails from the banks of the temporarily empty river.
“They’re voracious eaters of aquatic plants,” said Chris Vaughn, lead aquatic biologist with the San Antonio River Authority. “If they’re eating those, then that takes away foodstuffs for our native species, like our native snails and native fish. It also takes away things like nursery habitat for our fish.”
On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio to drain river, remove invasive species
Nefi Garza, assistant director overseeing storm water management at TCI, said the river’s main channel was drained between the lock and dam system near Brooklyn Avenue and the Nueva Street gate. It’s expected to stay that way until Friday.
The heavily visited Horseshoe Bend area of the River Walk downtown was left at its normal water level, using two isolation gates in an engineering system that officials say is the envy of other cities worldwide.
“That area is still functioning. It has plenty of water,” Garza said. “The barges are still running.”
The city first drained the river in the 1980s, and the business community responded with an annual Mud Festival. A Mud King and Queen were crowned every year, usually San Antonio celebrities or philanthropists, and there were other entertaining activities, all to help generate tourism and local interest while the channel was empty.
But construction of the Museum Reach and commercial development along the banks north of downtown have reduced the amount of trash and sediment flowing into the river, and annual draining is no longer needed. The last Mud Festival was in 2011.
On ExpressNews.com: Rain doesn’t dampen final Mud King and Queen coronation
Garza said the river might not have to be drained again until 2024, depending on how much gets done this week.
Arresting finds
In past years, crews have retrieved a wide variety of objects from the river bottom — wedding rings, silverware, furniture and even historic relics, including an antique revolver, musket balls, arrowheads and stone tools believed to date back 2,000 years.
So far this year, the more than 100 TCI employees working on the project have removed dozens of scooters and a “whole bunch of chairs,” Garza said. Workers also are inspecting the walls and banks for needed repairs.
Another goal to be achieved during the draining of the river along the Museum Reach is removal of the apple snail, a non-native species that has wreaked havoc on rice crops in Asia and posed a threat to native species in lakes and canals around Houston and other areas of the Gulf Coast.
They were first spotted in San Antonio near the city marina along Nueva in October, and SARA workers removed 79 of the snails’ pink egg sacs, which each hold thousands of eggs, in December.
Fifty of the snails were removed from the riverbanks Monday.
Vaughn said the San Antonio onslaught is “almost certainly” the result of snails released from personal aquariums. They’re usually sold at pet shops and can grow to baseball size.
SARA officials believe that the snails have spread no farther downstream than the Eagleland/Blue Star area, where a scant food supply and faster flows make it difficult for them to survive.
On ExpressNews.com: Museum Reach: From overgrown drainage ditch to flourishing urban gem
The agency hopes to take advantage of the periodic draining of the river to return it to its natural ecosystem as much as possible.
“We’re fairly certain this was a fairly recent invader,” Vaughn said, noting that other aggressive non-native species, such as blue tilapia and suckermouth catfish, also are being removed to give bass and native catfish a more stable environment.
Non-native species are being disposed of under humane methods recommended by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Native species are being left in place when possible, or transferred in aerated buckets to relocation zones approved by the state wildlife agency.
“If they’re visibly stranded — on their side, kind of gasping for air or something — we will remove them,” Vaughn said.
Back to normal
If all goes as planned, the Museum Reach part of the river will be refilled to its normal level by Friday, using recycled stormwater stored in a giant 24-foot-wide, 3-mile-long flood control tunnel about 150 feet below downtown, augmented by recycled wastewater supplied by the San Antonio Water System.
The empty river has been drawing numerous sightseers, such as downtown worker Steve Cantu, 38.
On a lark, he went jogging on the Museum Reach to catch a glimpse of the unusual sight.
Cantu was amazed at all the bikes, strings of Christmas lights, shoes and other personal belongings littering the bottom, looking like a worldly sacrifice to San Antonio’s cultural life stream.
“There’s a lot of stuff in it. Just a bunch of junk,” he said.
Cantu spotted a cellphone in the mud and remembered that his wife had dropped hers in the river during last year’s Fiesta celebration. So he jumped in and retrieved it, a red iPhone 6 Plus, apparently inoperable and covered in goo. He said he took it home and told her he’d found her phone.
“I knew it wasn’t hers,” Cantu said, laughing. “After the rains we’ve had, hers is long gone.”
Scott Huddleston covers Bexar County government and the Alamo for the San Antonio Express-News. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | shuddleston@express-news.net | Twitter: @shuddlestonSA
"Trash" - Google News
January 07, 2020 at 05:00PM
https://ift.tt/36xvHrn
San Antonio River draining targets invasive snail, uncovers weird trash - San Antonio Express-News
"Trash" - Google News
https://ift.tt/33Uwgu2
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "San Antonio River draining targets invasive snail, uncovers weird trash - San Antonio Express-News"
Post a Comment