Power Plant Bridge Vine Removal

[Judd]

The Friends of the Mount Vernon Trail have been removing kudzu vines from the bridge next to the power plant in Alexandria. This is the concrete bridge that is enclosed by chain link fence that also contains a series of zig zags that create poor sight lines. The kudzu was further reducing sight lines and also creating a risk of damaging the fencing from the weight of the vines. In addition to making the bridge more dangerous, kudzu is a fast growing invasive species that destroys mature trees and native plants that wildlife rely on.

Some pictures of the bridge at the start of the project:
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[Judd]

The first power plant bridge work day occurred on November 17th. Six volunteers started focused on removing vines that were hanging down into trail users path and then started working on removing vines on the river side.

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[Judd]

Good progress was made on the first day opening up the view of the river from the bridge and getting a good start on a fence that multiple years worth of tangled vines.

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The view from the beach was already looking much better.

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[Judd]

On November 28th, six volunteers continued working on removing vines. The work was made more difficult by a lack of access to the side of the fence the vines were on. One clever volunteer was able to make her way down to the beach and pull a large amount of vines off the wall.

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[Judd]

On 11-29 we had 7 volunteers working on the bridge. Work was starting to get more difficult because we had worked our way to the vines on the top of the bridge which were very tangled together. Two of our shorter volunteers ended up working on removing vines from some of the nearby mature trees. The inside of the bridge was starting to look good.

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[Judd]

On December 6th, 20 volunteers assembled to finish removing kudzu from the power plant bridge. We had a couple of them figure out how to get on top of the bridge which made getting the tangled mess off the top much easier.

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[Judd]

All told, volunteers contributed 110 hours to removing kudzu from this bridge and removed over 100 thirty gallon bags of vines. We will likely have one more event in January to knock out a few punch list items.

If you’d like to see these types of improvements on the trail there are two ways to help:

1. Sign up for an upcoming volunteer event at mountvernontrail.org/events
2. Make a donation at our GoFundMe page so we can continue to buy tools and supplies. https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-crash-free-trollheim

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[JustinW]

Wonderful work – thanks to all who helped!

Recently, going through that “tunnel” felt like biking down some fuzzy dragon’s gullet, what with all of the vines and such. Seeing daylight along there will be great!

[Judd]

@JustinW 203060 wrote:

Wonderful work – thanks to all who helped!

Recently, going through that “tunnel” felt like biking down some fuzzy dragon’s gullet, what with all of the vines and such. Seeing daylight along there will be great!

The experience is very different now. I happened upon a picture of the bridge from 2008 and it had a couple of vines on just one panel of the fence so it looks like we had 12-13 years worth of vines to work on.

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[harrison_on_a_bike]

Awesome work! I was formerly a regular commuter using that tunnel, amazing to see it full of sunlight! Incredible work on the part of the volunteers and organizers! Thank you!

[Author]

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