Photo by Skip Lawrence Crews from Environmental Services Inc. work next to the bank of Little Catoctin Creek at Doub's Meadow Park in the town of Myersville Wednesday.

The creek still gets stocked, but erosion and lack of vegetation along the banks in Doub's Meadow Park in Myersville made the creek an unfriendly home for trout.

The town of Myersville and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are partners on a $200,000 project to prevent erosion, improve stream flow and improve the habitat along a 625 foot stretch of bank that flows through the park. The project began Aug. 10 and should be completed by the end of the month.

Most of the project has been paid for with grants, including a grant from the FWS' Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed Grants Program, along with some in-kind work on the part of the town of Myersville and the FWS.

The stream has had little buffer through that stretch for many years, said Mark Secrist, a biologist for the FWS who works out of the Chesapeake Bay Field Office in Annapolis. The park was once farmland.

Trout need fast-moving water and shade, not sand, silt and gravel. But erosion meant the stream had plenty of sediment.

Such sediment would make its way into Catoctin Creek, and then into the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. Little Catoctin Creek joins with Middle Creek downstream from the park to form Catoctin Creek.

A crew from Environmental Services Inc.'s Hagerstown office rolled out and staked biodegradable matting to hold the soil in place.

This fall, volunteers for the Chesapeake Bay Trust will plant rows of dogwoods, willow trees and native shrubs along the bank, along with maple trees, oaks and sycamores.

Roots from the vegetation will help hold the bank in place, Secrist said. "It'll have a good mix of habitat, way better than the turf grass that's here now."

A worker from Environmental Services used a crane to lift large native rocks and logs and place them in the creek. These were donated by a local resident and are being used to create rock and log vanes that mimic the effects of natural vegetation in a stream. That gives trout pools and riffles in which to feed and rest. It also helps to spread seeds from vegetation upstream.

Those seeds will allow native plants like jewelweed, an antidote to poison ivy, to grow along the banks.

Doug Hutzell, the project's manager from Environmental Services, said a similar stream improvement project on Beaver Creek near Hagerstown helped restore native brook trout to that creek.

While that's not likely here, Secrist said this project will allow stocked trout to have a more natural habitat and possibly spawn.

"It's partially a demonstration project for us, so other agencies and stream practitioners can look at it," he said. The FWS' National Conservation Training Center in nearby Shepherdstown, W.Va., hosts watershed professionals from federal, state and local governments, nonprofit agencies and private industries all over the country. The Myersville project will become one of the showcase projects.

The Myersville project is the first of three major environmental projects totaling about $1 million undertaken by the town, said Kristin Aleshire, Myersville town manager.

Another is to develop a paved trail leading from Town Hall to Doub's Meadow Park, which will allow residents to walk to the park and bypass a busy road. The third project is a natural park on Pleasant Walk Road next to the springs that supply the town's water. The trail will be completed by the end of this year, and work on the natural park begins next year, he said.