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Why Adding a 10-Foot-Wide Greenway Along Bolin Creek’s 30-Foot-Wide Sewage Easement Is a Great Idea
A perspective from Melody Joy Kramer
Imagine this: An extensive, off-road greenway network connecting Chapel Hill and Carrboro, allowing residents and visitors the ability to walk or bike from the Community Center Park in Chapel Hill all the way up to Lake Hogan Farms in Carrboro. Over 5 miles of paved, accessible, ADA-compliant, and connected paths for kids and adults.
Additional greenways connect Chapel Hill and Carrboro north and south, and east and west. Over time, it will be easy, safe, and accessible to bike or walk to UNC, Franklin Street, downtown Carrboro, and neighborhoods in both towns.
That dream is inching closer to reality. Chapel Hill just received a $1 million grant to plan and expand its greenway network, and recently submitted the Bolin Creek greenway extension to Estes Drive to a transportation funding survey conducted by NCDOT. (You can take the survey here.)
And in Carrboro, where I live, the town council has restarted the engagement process around the alignment for the Bolin Creek Greenway, which would connect to Chapel HIll’s greenway and then extend (via the creekside alignment) to Lake Hogan Farms, connecting dozens of neighborhoods in Carrboro and making it much easier (and safer) for our kids to walk and bike to school.
Add in the Morgan Creek Greenway plans, and you have a future in Carrboro where our kids can safely bike and walk to many neighborhood schools, where people of all ages and mobility levels can walk along the creek, and where we as a community reduce our car usage for 1-3 mile trips. (Even a percentage of residents doing this for school pickup and small errands would reduce our carbon load and increase the health of our community.)
Greenways are everywhere
There are greenways in sewage easements in Hillsborough (River Walk), Chapel Hill, Asheville, Durham, Cary, Raleigh, and Blowing Rock. They are common and beloved by residents, who often raise money to get them built.
But in Carrboro, a small group of opponents – many of whom live directly next to the forest – have stopped the greenway by repeatedly pointing to statements that are flat out false. A recent Viewpoints column repeated this misinformation, which is not supported by a large body of evidence about greenways in the hundreds of places they’ve been built around the United States.
We’re talking about a heavily trafficked sewage easement
Let’s start with some facts: The 30-foot-wide sewage easement that was designed and installed along Bolin Creek in 1965 was meant to harbor a large pipe that moves poop – it was not designed to be the incredibly popular recreational trail that it has become in the last several decades. There are some destructive consequences that result from that — including increased runoff and sedimentation into the stream, and a surface that is functionally impervious. (That means that it’s not retaining water.) A memo from the Town of Carrboro made this abundantly clear:
Greenway opponents often cite research about the negative impacts of locating pavement next to streams, but also carefully elide the fact that we have a 30-foot wide impervious path next to the creek right now.
A major argument for co-locating the greenway with the sewer easement is that doing so would actually shrink the total amount of impervious surface along the creek because in dedicating ten feet to pavement for trail users we can reclaim the other twenty to forty feet with seeded shoulders and other vegetation. This, too, is noted in the memo:
What about the trees?
Building a greenway along an existing sewer easement along the creek means a path can be designed with a minimum of tree clearing, while the erosion that pedestrian and OWASA truck traffic are already causing can be improved through bank restoration and keeping pedestrians and bikers in designated areas.
The proposed Carrboro’s Bolin Creek trail (10 feet wide) would follow the existing 30-foot-wide OWASA sewer easement, which doesn’t have trees in it. That’s because tree roots could hurt existing sewage pipes, and our water utility OWASA needs to occasionally access the pipes along Bolin Creek with utility vehicles.
There is a chance that some trees may need to be removed from the corridor. 15 in total were removed for the Bolin Creek Trail along Umstead Drive in Chapel Hill. It is expected that the path will take up just under 3 acres total, much of it in the existing easement, and at a width of 10 feet.
What about erosion and flooding along the creek’s riparian zone?
A riparian zone is the vegetated lined corridor at the edge of streams, rivers, and lakes. The soil and vegetation along riparian zones are shaped by the presence of water, and they serve as important natural filters for pollutants, including sediment and nutrients that can flow into the stream.
The riparian zone next to the Bolin Creek in Carrboro is not healthy. There is no vegetative cover in many places, and the velocity and volume of stormwater that enter the creek is large. Conditions on the easement were and continue to be bleak and well documented.
Riparian zones – that is, the land right next to the creek – can be improved by creating a small paved path that contains humans and allows for environmental restoration of the streambank.
Improving the riparian zone is good for all of us. It can improve water quality — green space created by these natural corridors helps to mitigate storm-water runoff and encourage water table recharge.
What about flooding?
Chapel Hill has greenways along Booker and Bolin Creeks and they were built to withstand high-velocity floods. You can read more in this assessment prepared by the town, which also notes that very little damage has been caused over the past 40 years due to floods along the creek.
Greenways can also serve as natural floodplains. By restoring developed floodplains to their natural state, many riverside communities are preventing potential flood damage. (Greenways don’t prevent flooding, but can help mitigate their damage depending on how they’re constructed.)
A blog post by Mecklenburg County, NC explains why flooding greenways is actually a good thing. Greenways “serve as buffers or “no build” zones. These buffers store excess stormwater runoff and protect surrounding natural areas that are able to absorb flood waters and filter stormwater pollutants. The natural vegetation in these buffer areas also helps reduce the chance of erosion and moderate water temperatures.”
An assessment from a world-renowned greenway expert noted “the narrow 10-foot-width of the trail will not, in and of itself, add anymore additional impact in either velocity or volume of stormwater than what is already being experienced by the impervious social trail that laces throughout the corridor along Bolin Creek. In fact, building a defined trail corridor…and completing environmental restoration will serve to improve the overall environmental health of the corridor and reduce the impact to the stream corridor.”
We can improve the creek, and make it easier for kids and adults to get to school, recreate, and enjoy nature.
Bolin Creek has been impacted by decades of human activity. In many places, there is no vegetative buffer between the area that is heavily used and the creek itself, primarily due to extensive trail braiding, so runoff flows unfiltered into the creek. There are sewer manholes next to the creek, sewer pipes that carry wastewater across the creek, and the Bolin Forest HOA has built several play structures right up to the creek’s edge.The trail along the creek is severely braided in some areas where trail users are avoiding puddles by going around them, widening the trail and encroaching further into the forest.
OWASA trucks go on the existing Bolin Creek Trail in Chapel Hill and the Booker Creek Trail in Chapel Hill to examine their pipes. The foundation of the Carrboro trail would be no different. Greenway designers are well used to working within difficult terrain, as they have in both Chapel Hill and Hillsborough.
And building a greenway increases access to our beautiful natural areas.
Currently, people who use wheelchairs and strollers and walkers can easily access greenways in Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, Durham, Raleigh, Charlotte and Cary — but they can’t do so along Bolin Creek in Carrboro.
Carrboro wants greenways
The culture of Carrboro is one that embraces projects that produce outcomes resulting in greater equity and climate resilience. The town’s recently adopted Comprehensive Plan calls for just that, and a connected greenway network that takes cars off the road and opens up natural areas for more residents delivers both of those outcomes. Additionally, the town’s biennial community survey showed an enormous interest in greenways.
Hundreds of people use the Bolin Creek Greenway in Chapel Hill to walk, bike, and be close to nature. I look forward to a day when people of all ages and mobility levels can do the same across Carrboro – and when our towns are more connected and accessible for all.
“Viewpoints” on Chapelboro is a recurring series of community-submitted opinion columns. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work or reporting of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.
I and many other residents believe that shutting down the UNC’s Coal Plant and reuse the tracks as a greenway that connects Chapel Hill, Carrboro, the Bolin Creek area and many schools and businesses would solve a lot of issues. Let’s work on that!