Shaun Moore

Partial Transcript: I'm Shaun Moore, and I started up SM Soil and Water Solutions about three years ago to do environmental restoration work for landowners around western North Carolina. I really try to—I like doing bigger projects, but I'm trying to fill a niche between some of the big engineering and big construction firms and just the homeowner doing it themselves. I find—I've found from when I worked with the—I worked with Henderson County Soil and Water Conservation District for a decade. I found, then, that they get—can get a lot of great work done, but there's always kind of a landowner in between there that often has a hard time finding contractors to do what they do or what they need done.
So I own the business. And we do a lot of stream—streams and wetlands, stream bank stabilization, create more biodiversity with planting native plants and managing invasive plants. And we do some planning and modeling, watershed assessment work. But I have to admit, this is kind of the funnest part, being out here and just planting trees.

Partial Transcript: I think about that a lot. I don't really—there's not really a time or a place where I just—or an episode that just started. I think I was—I was nearly born in a river, literally. Where I grew up was right at the confluence of two streams. And soon as school was out, that's where I was at and all summer long. And it just—just being on rivers and working on rivers and water quality has just always been a passion of mine. I'm just fortunate, one of the fortunate folks who was able to turn it into a profession.

Partial Transcript: Today, we're finishing up a big planting project here on this beautiful property on the upper Foster Creek watershed. We're putting in about 250 native trees, in conjunction with managing some invasive species. All these native trees are going to increase the biodiversity out here, which is great for ecological reasons. But for—from water quality standpoints, it's going to offer some shade on the stream, which keeps our streams cool, which is really important for the critters that like our cool mountain waters.
From the bugs' consideration, that live in the water, they often will get smothered out by sediment that falls off of stream banks. And usually, when stream banks are eroding, it's not always the case, but it's often the case that it's because there aren't any trees and shrubs growing on the stream bank where the roots would be holding that soil together. This is actually a really good—a good demonstration of that.
Upstream of here there's trees, and downstream there's trees. And there's not really any stream bank erosion. But right here, on this small bend, the trees have been lost over the years, and there's quite a lot of soil just falling in here.
So from a landowner's perspective, he's just losing land. It's just going down the stream. He's losing this corner of his field because the stream is just washing it out. So it's protecting his land, and it's protecting the environment. And it's a fairly simple, cost-effective way to do it, with trees.

Partial Transcript: Well, there's a lot that goes into indicating a stream that is unstable. There's—some of the real obvious things, though, is just bare soil just falling in the stream. In our streams, in western North Carolina, and pretty much the world 'round, if there's bare soil along the stream bank, it's probably an unstable situation. You would normally have plants. And on a stream this small, you would have so many plants, you probably wouldn't even know the creek was there until you just about stepped in it, in a natural, stable condition.
I do understand the—the aesthetic of wanting to be able to mow right down to the edge of the water, so you can see the stream. You can get in it. It's pleasing. I mean, you can hear the water better. Everybody's attracted to that. So they want to make it more accessible by mowing. The problem with that is, during normal water flows, like, a day like today—you know—there's not a lot of visual things wrong with that. Except, one thing people really don't think a lot about is shading on the stream. Our salamanders and our bugs and our fish are really adapted to cold streams. And they need that shade to stay cold. It's—it's quite amazing how much the water temperature can go up from when it runs through a shaded portion of stream and then gets into a—just 100 feet of full sun exposure can boost the water temperature up so much that downstream of there, the oxygen holding capacity of the water is decreased such that trout don't even—can't even habitat that area. So that's one reason why we don't like to see too much mowing down to the creek.
Another reason is during our higher flood events, higher water events, grass, generally, just doesn't have deep enough and strong enough roots to hold that soil in place. We like the depths of the roots of trees and woody shrubs. They can really withstand floodwaters. They hold the bank when the water comes through, rushing through, which it really does in our streams in the mountains. We get large rain events, and we got steep streams. And it really takes those—that dense mass of roots, which you get with a diverse species of plants. Some trees will have really deep roots. Some have medium-depth roots. And we try to get a good mix of that in there.

Partial Transcript: Why would somebody care about protecting the water quality here? It's not free to do this kind of work. You know, there's—whether it's dollars or if it's just labor and your time and energies, why invest this work? Well, the altruistic reason is we all live downstream. If this work weren't—when this—before this work was done, the downstream neighbor was getting sediment deposited in his section of the stream. And then that could cause stream bank instability. And so on and so forth, it just migrates downstream.
There's all—there's a lot of—tons of ecological reasons. Some people, that's reason enough. But sometimes sites where we work—frequently, sites where we work, they're just losing their land. I mean, they're 10,000 an acre, 20-, 30-, 40,000-dollar acre land is just going down the stream every time there's a big storm. That's—that's lost productivity, lost real estate. Sometimes there are structures nearby that are being threatened. And keeping a stable stream bank protects that investment. That's—that's often where the dollars and cents really are easier to justify.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. This—Foster Creek, here, is part of the Mills River watershed. And the Mills River watershed provides drinking water for much of Henderson County. If you're on city water in Henderson County, you're most likely getting your water from this stream. And also, it serves the Asheville regional water plant, which provides city water to a lot of south Asheville and the southside. So there's 100,000, maybe, customers who are drinking this water.
So there's a lot of—you know—there's a lot of reasons for us to have clean water, a clean water source. It's a lot cheaper to clean clean water to turn it into drinking water. It's—it's just generally safer. There are some things that could get into our streams that are hard to detect at a water treatment plant. And there…

Partial Transcript: Absolutely. There's all kinds of different things that bind to sediment. You know, we're—when I say "we," I can speak for myself with this. We as farmers are managing this land to produce—produce things. And sometimes, to be productive in that world, we have to use fertilizers or some chemicals. And we're all trying to use them as judiciously and safely as possible, but there could be events where some of the chemicals are transported to the stream, often, as they're bound to the soil. Sometimes the chemicals are—become diluted in storm water, and the water itself will go run off into the stream. But there's other chemicals that bind to that soil. So if we can keep the soil out, we keep a lot of—a lot of chemicals. Some—there are some things that were used fifty years ago that—you know—nobody knew that they were a problem. But now, science has advanced. We've learned some things. And now we know we don't really want that to be going down our drinking water streams.

Partial Transcript: Sure. This farm, this beautiful place, is owned by Mr. John Humphrey. Mr. Humphrey is kind of—really, kind of an inspiration to so many of us in this water quality world and just land conservation world in this region. He put this farm into a conservation easement. It's the very first one in Henderson County. He's got I don't know how much land, but it's—it's quite a lot. It backs up to the national forest up here. And he, a long time ago, preserved this land for perpetuity.
And since then, he's put—he's done some bog restoration upstream from here. He's doing a lot of this riparian stabilization and enhancement work. He's done a lot of invasive plant work. And when I say "he," often it is he. He's 102 years old. And just up until the last couple years—even today, he's out pulling invasive plants.
I remember the first time I met him. I was working for the county, and I drove up to his house. He had—he had a little stream bank erosion work that he wanted me to look at. And I pull up there, knowing that he was probably ninety years old. I get out there, and he's out in a yard, doing a dry-stack stone wall. And I thought, wow, this is—this is impressive. Then we get out the chainsaw and start doing some work on some—some invasive plants.
So he's just a great guy. Always doing it just because it's the right thing. He's doing—that's why he's doing this work.