Stroubles Creek is an approximately stream that runs through the town of Blacksburg, the

Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also ...

campus, and

Montgomery County, Virginia Montgomery County is a county located in the Valley and Ridge area of the U.S. state of Virginia. As population in the area increased, Montgomery County was formed in 1777 from Fincastle County, which in turn had been taken from Botetourt Count ...

until it empties into the New River. Most of the sections of Stroubles Creek that flow through Blacksburg and the

campus are piped underground, while the portion that flows through Montgomery County is above-ground. Stroubles Creek has been designated an impaired waterway since 2002.

Physical characteristics

Stream

Stroubles Creek flows into the New River, which then flows into the

Kanawha River The Kanawha River ( ) is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately 97 mi (156 km) long, in the U.S. state of West Virginia. The largest inland waterway in West Virginia, its valley has been a significant industrial region of the stat ...

, the

Ohio River The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...

, the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

, and finally the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

. There are two branches that merge at the

Duck Pond: the Main Branch and the Webb Branch. Downstream of the Duck Pond, many tributary streams flow into Stroubles Creek, including Slate Branch and Walls Branch.

Watershed

The Stroubles Creek watershed, a subwatershed of the New River watershed, is . The Stroubles Creek watershed is further divided into an upper and a lower watershed, with the Virginia Tech Duck Pond acting as a divider between the two. The Upper Stroubles Creek watershed is approximately , and it is heavily impacted by urbanization in Blacksburg and on the Virginia Tech campus. The Lower Stroubles Creek watershed includes some urbanized areas on the western side of the Virginia Tech campus, but then it flows mostly through rural lands until it reaches the New River. The watershed is located in

karst Karst is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves. It has also been documented for more weathering-resistant ro ...

terrain, with

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

formations,

sinkhole A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. The term is sometimes used to refer to doline, enclosed depressions that are locally also known as ''vrtače'' and shakeholes, and to openi ...

s, and

natural spring A spring is a point of exit at which groundwater from an aquifer flows out on top of Earth's crust (pedosphere) and becomes surface water. It is a component of the hydrosphere. Springs have long been important for humans as a source of fresh w ...

s. The stream bed is made up of cobbles and pebbles with

alluvia Alluvium (from Latin ''alluvius'', from ''alluere'' 'to wash against') is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluv ...

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...

deposits (stratified unconsolidated silt, clay, and sand with lenses).

History

European settlers first moved into the Stroubles Creek area in the 1740s. It acted as a water source for the settlers, although today the New River is used as the water source for the area. In 1798, the town of Blacksburg was founded in the upper Stroubles Creek watershed. In 1851, the

Preston and Olin Institute The Preston and Olin Institute was a Methodist academy for boys in Blacksburg, Virginia which operated from 1851 to 1872. They chose the name Preston for Colonel William Ballard Preston, of nearby Smithfield Plantation, a well-known Montgomery Cou ...

was opened, which would later become Virginia Tech. In 1937, Virginia Tech's Drillfield was constructed, which resulted in the main branch of Stroubles Creek being

culvert A culvert is a structure that channels water past an obstacle or to a subterranean waterway. Typically embedded so as to be surrounded by soil, a culvert may be made from a pipe, reinforced concrete or other material. In the United Kingdom ...

ed underground. The Virginia Tech Duck Pond was also created at this time when a dam was constructed where the two branches merged.

Pollution incidents

The Stroubles Creek watershed has experienced pollution going back to the 1800s. From the 19th century to the 1930s, coal mining wastewater contaminated the watershed. From 1970 to 1978, chemical waste from the Virginia Tech chemistry labs was discharged directly into the Duck Pond. In 1985, kerosene was spilled into the Duck Pond. And in 2006, of fuel oil were spilled into the stream from a local hardware store's above-ground storage tank. In the 1970s, the

Clean Water Act The Clean Water Act (CWA) is the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution. Its objective is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters; recognizing the responsibiliti ...

prompted the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to monitor the lower portion of the stream downstream of the Duck Pond. The DEQ classified lower Stroubles Creek as benthically impaired in 1996 and 1998. In 2002, Stroubles Creek was included as an impaired waterway in the Virginia

total maximum daily load A total maximum daily load (TMDL) is a regulatory term in the U.S. Clean Water Act, describing a plan for restoring impaired waters that identifies the maximum amount of a pollutant that a body of water can receive while still meeting water quali ...

(TMDL) list of impaired waterways. The Virginia Tech Department of Biological Systems Engineering (BSE) conducted a study on the stream in 2003, and a TMDL implementation plan was completed in 2006 by the Center for TMDL and Watershed Studies through the BSE department.

References

External links

Virginia Tech Site & Infrastructure DevelopmentVirginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ)Virginia Water Resources Research Center
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20060829141357/http://www.tmdl.bse.vt.edu/ Center for TMDL and Watershed Studies, Virginia Techbr>Virginia Tech LabView Enabled Watershed Assessment System (LEWAS) LabMontgomery County, VirginiaBlacksburg, Virginia
{{authority control Virginia Tech Rivers of Virginia Rivers of Montgomery County, Virginia