More than anything, Friends of Deckers Creek is about cleaning up the creek.

Trash clean-ups are the quickest way to make the watershed look better. Friends of Deckers Creek takes care of a three-mile stretch of Route 7 between Pioneer Rocks and Cascade three times a year through the state’s Adopt-a-Highway program, at the same time making sure the parallel section of the Deckers Creek rail-trail is litter-free. We participate each April in Monongalia County’s Project Pride. And usually once a year, we clean up a major illegal dump somewhere in the watershed.

Toward cleaning up the water, we monitor acid mine drainage pollutants in the Preston County section of the watershed. We are gathering data on sediment and on stream bottom life to understand why fish don’t live in parts of the creek that seem to have good water quality. And last fall we began an annual count of the fish that do live in various parts of the creek. All these data tell us where the problems are, and help us assess the bottom-line value of any actions taken to clean up the creek.

We can’t clean up the creek by ourselves! We involve as many people as we can.

Our diverse board includes scientists, activists, professors, fishermen, and other interested residents from throughout the watershed. We work with local government and with business owners toward treating the creek as an asset that can attract people to the area—our Clean Creek Program, launched in fall 2002, pairs local businesses with specific sites on the creek to monitor improvement over time. Our consistent attention to state and federal agencies has helped revive a major 1999 AMD clean-up proposal. We work with other local nonprofit groups to maximize everyone’s efforts for the area’s recreational resources. Perhaps most importantly, our paying membership represents people throughout the watershed who, with us, are coming to see that Deckers Creek can once again be a healthy and enjoyable part of their lives.

We share what we know with all these groups. This Web site and our triennial newsletter Deckers Creek Currents keep people up-to-date about changes in the watershed. FODC’s occasional talks give in-depth information about water quality problems and solutions. A full-color poster, to be released this fall, illustrates watershed problems and the solutions we’re working on.