Support: Internships

Five Mile Creek Greenway Partnership will be hiring summer interns for various tasks including GIS, trail location studies, office support and field testing.  Please read over this report from Summer 2007 intern Calvin Cassady from Enterprise, Alabama.

Contact: Francesca E. Gross
Five Mile Creek Partnership Coordinator
1731 1st Avenue North
Suite 200
Birmingham, AL 35203

205-264-8464
205-264-8489 fax
email  fgross@rpcgb.org    

Calvin Cassady
Monthly Internship Report

This summer I am interning for the Five Mile Creek Greenway Partnership.  This is a specific project for the Cahaba, Warrior, Coosa or CAWACO Resource Conservation and Development.  Our office is located at the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham building.  I have been working on various smaller projects within the Five Mile Creek Greenway Partnership. 

First I will tell you about the Five Mile Creek greenway.  A greenway is a series of linear parks, walking trails, and green space located in a city to better the community.  Greenways help reduce air, water, and noise pollution, provide habitat for native plants and animals, serve as an alternative means of transportation, and provide citizens with recreational activities.  The problem is that Birmingham, Alabama is severely lacking these services.  Frederick Olmstead, the designer of Central Park, came up with a master park plan for Birmingham in the early 1900’s that was mostly disregarded, and now there are few parks, trails, and greenways in Birmingham.  The FMC greenway will change that. 

Five Mile Creek is an urban stream with headwaters in northeast Birmingham in the town of Center Point.  From there it runs generally east to west where it eventually meets the Locust Fork of the Warrior River in west Jefferson County.  In the past the stream was legally used by local industry as a chemical dumping ground, but changed from industrial use to recreation in the mid 90’s.  Since then much has been done to clean up the creek, and it is now clean enough to swim and fish in. 

The way the FMC greenway came into being was from the catastrophic 100 year flood of 2003.  Due to the lack of open spaces up-stream, and the abundance of built up and paved areas the stream has a flooding problem, especially on the western end of the watershed in the towns of Brookside and Cardiff.  After the flood FEMA and the Land Trust have been purchasing land in the floodplain to keep people from building there, and to create a riparian corridor buffer.  This has resulted in an abundance of open space adjacent to the creek, and the possibility for a greenway.  Another factor that comes into play in this equation is the construction of corridor X, and future construction of the northern beltline.  These highways will run right next to the towns of Brookside, Cardiff, and Graysville, and will probably result in massive new development in the area.  It will be much easier to implement a greenway before droves of people move into the area, and it will be very beneficial to the new residents when they get there.

My job has included several specific projects within the greenway partnership.  I have worked on selecting sites for canoe launches along the creek.  Many factors went into the selection process including parcel data, topography, transportation access, and in some cases handicap access.  I was also responsible for design, and materials estimates for the launch sites.  I am also happy to say one of the proposed launches has been completed since I have been here. 
Another responsibility I have is taking an inventory of historic sites along the greenway.  I have been working with a local historian who is also a history professor at Samford University.  We have been doing field work with GPS units to map the sites on our website.  I have been working on this mapping with another intern whose specialty is GIS.  I helped him some, but he did most of the technical GIS work on the computer while I observed and talked him through it. 

One important thing our organization does is inform interested parties of the best practice ways of doing things.  We do this by sponsoring continuing education seminars for professionals in several different areas.  I have helped prepare for two of these conferences while at CAWACO.  One such conference was through the Regional Planning Commission, and was entitled “The State of Urban Thoroughfare Design, Applications for Rural, Suburban, and Urban Areas.”  It was and all day event held at the McWane Center, and it was all about road and transportation designs that are best for all users including drivers, and pedestrians.   I was introduced to many new concepts related to transportation planning.  I also got to rub shoulders with professional planners, developers, landscape architects, engineers, and civic leaders.  Another conference that we have been preparing for and will hold in two days is entitled “Stream Bank Restoration Using Natural Channel Design.”  I was exposed to these practices early in my internship when we did some preliminary surveying and planning at Black Creek Park in Fultondale.  I worked with Abner Patton of Patton Geologics in Tuscaloosa doing surveying.  Our goal is to widen the channel and floodplain to hold more runoff during a rain event, to slow the creek down so that it would drop some of its sediment before it reached FMC, and to install somewhat of a natural wetland to purify the water, and provide marine habitat for fish.  This will be done with the latest in erosion control products, including blankets interlaced with native plants, and coconut string logs installed at the toe of the bank and staked in with live willow trees.  After a few years the plants root in, and the nets all biodegrade.  This project is also a public service message for the park users of the correct way to manage an eroding stream bank.  I have also been involved in some smaller projects, but these are my main accomplishments thus far.

I have also faced some challenges during my internship.  My first such challenge came when I was developing the canoe launches.  I looked at a book full of examples of “Logical Lasting Launches” before I began my planning.  Then I began designing the launches with grading, steps, cutbacks, and other features I thought our launches would need.  I took the crudest, cheapest approach possible on all of my designs since we are a non-profit agency with finite resources.  After I drew my designs I took them to the GIS intern, and we went about making graphic representations of the designs on the computer where they looked really good.  Next I started doing materials estimates, and that is where the problem came.  My launches, although crude were several thousand dollars too expensive.  Other challenges have included faulty altitude readings on our GPS equipment which resulted in a day of practically useless field work.  To solve this we came back with measuring tape and measured the grades and drops by hand. 

Overall I have been extremely pleased with my internship.  I can honestly say that I learn something new everyday.  The people I work with are all forward thinkers who genuinely want to improve the region.  They all care about human, economic, environmental, and cultural factors, and consider them all when making decisions.  I have met many wonderful people who I hope to have the chance to work with in the future, and that is the most important thing I will take from this internship.