When planning a new waste haul road on the Oak Ridge Reservation, Bechtel Jacobs Company LLC, carefully considered environmental impacts. To ensure nothing was overlooked, planners identified and mapped wetlands as small as one square meter.
The final route avoided most environmentally sensitive areas. However, constructing 7.8 kilometers of road that crosses 13 streams made some impact unavoidable. To mitigate ecological intrusions and protect plant and animal diversity while building the road, Bechtel Jacobs also built a new wetland and restored a stream.
Working with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Bechtel Jacobs devised a plan to bypass a 1960s-era weir (a low dam) on Bear Creek with a constructed section of stream. The bypass lets the creek flow freely again and gives fish such as the Tennessee dace, a protected species that is beginning to thrive in Bear Creek, a channel in which to run upstream. In addition, Bechtel Jacobs built a new wetland behind the weir on 90 meters of original stream bed.
“The design and construction of the bypass channel and wetland represent a tremendous team effort,” says Stephen McCracken, assistant manager for Environmental Management with DOE’s Oak Ridge office.
