Project Update — National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) Grant Supports Valley Creek Corridor Restoration, Resilience, and Community Benefits

The City of Port Washington received a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) to start designing restoration plans for the Valley Creek Corridor. The Valley Creek Corridor, a 1.8 mile city-owned green space, has been experiencing excessive bank erosion which damages infrastructure such as water and sewer lines, degrades native fish habitat, and poses health and safety risks for those using the space. LNRP has been working with the City of Port Washington to secure funding for this project, and has been subcontracted with these funds to implement the education and outreach programs that will be incorporated into this design process.

LNRP plans to use this site as a case study to incorporate education from elementary school through college, and has begun conversations with multiple partners to implement educational programming. Dr. Ryan Newton at UW-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Science (SFS) has chosen Valley Creek as the first site of SFS’s undergraduate capstone project, where students will operate as a small consultant team on active restoration sites. The Wisconsin Sea Grant, another partner on this project, will provide additional higher education internships. St. Marcus Lutheran Schools, an organization out of Milwaukee but funded, in part, by the Krier Foundation, will bring students up to Valley Creek to catch macroinvertebrates, learn the basics of water monitoring, and enjoy time in nature.

LNRP is taking active steps to ensure we’re centering diversity, equity, and inclusion through our role in project outreach. Our staff and partners are developing educational programs with the goal of providing experiences to underserved students in the Milwaukee area. There will also be outreach focused on differently-abled community members. Project designs will be reviewed by Portal, Inc., an Ozaukee County based resource center for disabled adults, before they are finalized. This will ensure accessibility of the Valley Creek Corridor for all community members who wish to spend time there.

With help from LNRP, the City of Port Washington’s Valley Creek Corridor project will improve water quality and habitat, significantly reduce the risk of flooding, and increase safety and accessibility of this valuable public green space. It will also be a site for young people to develop a stewardship ethic that they can carry with them into the future. Although the NFWF funding is a great start, LNRP and the City of Port Washington are continuing to pursue other funding to complete the design process.