Representatives from various ecologically minded organizations spent Tuesday afternoon playing with clay, learning about river pathways and how water can be used to beautify an area, not something to be avoided, especially at a place like Great Falls Park.
But mostly, they played with clay.
As part of a workshop titled the “Great Falls Park Potomac River Project,” officials from the National Park Service, Environmental Protection Agency, Chesapeake Bay Program, urban planners, conservationists and students participated in a hands-on activity that involved taking large blocks of red clay and creating a river bed, complete with twists, rapids, islands and kayakers.
THE PURPOSE OF the workshop, said Park Service officer Brent O’Neill, was for people with an interest in conservation and working with the park to come up with ideas for exhibits inside the visitors center and along trails that would combine education and fun for visitors.
“The ideas that come from people doing this may help enhance the park here,” he said. “We’re looking to develop a partnership to enhance the way people interact with the Potomac here, how they’re connected to the watershed area,” O’Neill said. “The people here today are already working for conservation.”
“We would really like to find new ideas for this park and the visitors center, but you are the experts,” said Herbert Dreiseitl from Atelier Dreiseitl in Ueberlign, Germany, a company that specializes in using water for aesthetic beauty in community centers, parks and office buildings.
“Your creativity is required for this workshop,” he said, leading the group to two long, plastic-lined tables with empty garbage cans at the ends.
THEIR JOB, HE EXPLAINED, was to take the large blocks of clay and create a pathway for a river to take. “We’re working with the interpretation of this stream,” he said. “Water doesn’t flow in straight lines. It makes a new path and keeps changing because it wants to find the fastest path,” he said.
The two groups quickly set to work, building clay walls and bends for the river to flow through. One team built tributaries into its river’s path, along with a small delta at the end where the water would be at its slowest. The other team had a little more detail in mind, building islands, bridges, overlooks and boulders into the riverbed, complete with a kayaker, as can often be found in the Potomac River below the park.
“I had no idea we’d be playing with clay today,” said civil engineer Luis Teran. “I thought it was going to be watch a film, talk about it.”
National Park Service member Bob Campbell, helping Teran build a delta for their river, said that naturally, deltas are formed at the end of a river by the deposition of sediment as a river loses speed.
“There’s a lot of meandering in riverbeds because water is always looking for the fastest route,” he explained, widening the delta so it encompassed the end of the table.
O’NEILL WORKED HARD on constructing walls for the riverbed, rolling pieces of clay into tubular-shaped sections, then smushing them together on the riverbed.
“We’ve built a couple of islands in the river. Kind of thought it would be good to have an overlook too,” he said, hands red from the clay.
“This activity is for people to have a tangible connection to how the water flows in the Potomac River running through Great Falls,” O’Neill said.
“This project has an interesting background,” Dreiseitl said. “It gets you thinking about how water would run.”
After the initial riverbeds were constructed, Dreiseitl turned on a hose, and participants gathered around the first table to see how well their river was constructed. A few leaks were spotted. Some walls weren’t built quite high enough to keep the water from spilling onto the table, and those who weren’t watching the water got wet feet from the end of the table, where the delta wasn’t quite wide enough.
“When I turn the water off, you can redesign your riverbed based on what you’ve seen,” Dreiseitl said.
Audrey Calhoun, superintendent of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which runs alongside the Potomac River, was excited about the workshop and the ideas that may come from it.
“The exhibits we have in the visitors center are to explain to visitors what’s important about the park,” she said. “That’s why we do our ranger hikes and talks.”
SHE HOPES THAT if some of the ideas can be implemented at the park, “we can get out to the public what’s important about the Potomac River Gorge. We can point out things that they can look at on a trial and see nature working and why it’s important to preserve the Gorge.”
An exercise like the river-building project might be especially effective for the many school groups that visit the park every year, she said. “We do a section on geology and natural resources. This may be a good way to explain things to our students. We consider ourselves to be an outdoor classroom at the park, and things always make more sense when you can see it in action,” she said.
“Not only is this a lot of fun, there’s a lot to be learned here,” said Dreiseitl, as the groups were rebuilding their riverbeds. He pointed to a section of the first group’s river where the walls had been built higher after the group had watched the water rush over the sides.
“These people here have really had to think about the communities and how the river would affect them,” he said. “This is the best way to learn about things, to hold an exercise and then talk about what happened and how we can make it better.”
“We’ve been working on getting this workshop together for a long time,” said Jesse Reynolds, supervisory ranger at Great Falls Park. “I had some ideas based on Herbert’s presentation a few years ago. We hope a lot of people will generate ideas that we might be able to use in the park, and that maybe there will be enough energy left over from today to generate more ideas later,” he said.
PEOPLE WHO WORK on exhibits at the park have long-term goals and look for projects that can last or come into place for a span of 15 to 20 years, he said. “We’re looking for things where people can experience a display explaining how runoff water is handled and what happens to it, so they learn to respect the watershed and the river more,” he said.
“We have a wide cross-section of groups here today because we’re hoping for a wide variety of ideas,” Reynolds said.
The second half of the afternoon involved presentations by Dreiseitl and Katrin Scholz-Barth, an expert on green-roof technology, where buildings plant grass, plants and trees on their roofs to control water runoff and also control temperatures. She is also the director of the Scholz-Barth Consulting group in Washington, D.C., and is a civil engineer and teaches a watershed protection course at the University of Pennsylvania.