The restoration project now under way aims to widen the creek at the same time that it centralizes the flow, thereby enhancing the waterway for fishermen and kayakers alike, said Karl Lutz, stream habitat chief for the state Fish and Boat Commission at Pleasant Gap.

But the undertaking to improve conditions for delicate trout and the tiny insects they eat requires the decidedly indelicate imposition of tons of 2,000-pound boulders, an off-road dump truck to haul them up the creek and an powerful excavator with a massive steel bucket and thumb to cherry-pick the boulders and put them in the water.

Logs and root balls will be built in as well this week. They’ll reach into the water from the creek-banks to help stabilize the earthen sides and establish calm pools, apart from the mainstream flow, where fish can spawn, much as the effect of deadfall along healthy streams.

“This is an extreme project here — everything’s just so big,” Lutz said. “Instead of one big long ripple here, which is what we have now, you’re going to have ripple and then pool, ripple and then pool.”

The work is taking place along a 1,200-foot stretch of Spring Creek between Bellefonte and Milesburg, upstream from the site of the concrete dam that was 81 years old when it was removed section by section to gradually let out the sprawling pond behind it.

The problem is that the dam also backed up 81 years worth of silt, creating a soft sediment bed that the newly forceful creek carved straight through after the dam went away, forming a deep, narrow and swift channel.

The fish, said Spring Creek Chapter of Trout Unlimited member Art Kempf, “can live in it but they won’t spawn in it.”

The Fish and Boat Commission — and project partners Trout Unlimited and ClearWater Conservancy — said they anticipated the erosion. But they had to wait two years until the dam-free creek “etched its way” into its new channel to decide on specific repairs, said Cliff Wurster, Trout Unlimited board member.

“The stream might eventually get there if it did it by itself, but we’ll help it get there quicker,” Wurster said.

Katie Ombalski, ClearWater Conservancy project manager, estimated the total cost of repairs at $115,000, covered by contributions from grants through the three partners and $10,000 from an anonymous donor.

She said businesses the project has supported through competitive bidding include Ameron Construction; Glenn O. Haw-baker Inc.; Cleveland Bros.; Sheesley Supply; Construction Supply; Metzler Forest Products; Melville Forest Service; Ernst Conservation Seeds; John W. Gleim Jr. Inc., the Carlisle excavating contractor that removed the dam; and WHM Consulting, which designed the repairs.

The specific repairs include creek widening and streambank grading to flatten the cut of the creek into the earth. That phase of work was completed Monday by Gleim. On Tuesday the same work crew began to install the first of four cross vanes, limestone-boulder structures placed below the surface to direct the flow toward the center of the creek and relieve pressure on the banks.

The four structures — in the shape of Vs, with the point of the V facing upstream — will be spaced along the 1,200-foot repair section in the middle of the creek. From the banks will extend the logs, secured by big nails fashioned from reinforcement bars and sledge-driven into the earth.

Lutz said the 2,000-pound boulders should withstand powerful creek waters like the ones that followed the rains of the Hurricane Ivan remnants five years ago.

“All the structures we build are built low — high water should go right over the top,” Lutz said. “With that said, when you’re messing with flowing water, there are no guarantees.”

Consultant Josh Lincoln, a WHM specialist in stream and wetland sciences, said the root balls that are also due to be fixed to the banks will help natural vegetation take hold.

Lincoln, who designed the repairs for the former Mc- Coy’s Dam site, said dams don’t help streams. Streams, he said, “are very dynamic and when you take them out of equilibrium, things can become unwound.”

Mike Joseph can be reached at 235-3910.