Purpose
The West Hickman Watershed is an approximately 22 square mile watershed located within Fayette (18 square miles) and Jessamine (4 square miles) counties in Kentucky. In response to citizen interests about the watershed and the creek’s water quality, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government's (LFUCG's) Division of Environmental Services is working towards creating a watershed management plan.
The primary purpose of a watershed management plan is to guide watershed coordinators, resource managers, policy makers, and community organizations to restore and protect the quality of lakes, rivers, streams, and wetlands in a given watershed. The plan is intended to be a practical tool with specific recommendations on practices to improve and sustain water quality.
Community members' help is needed with this plan both on technical recommendations but also on the ground work (stream clean-up, buffer restoration, etc.). Keep up with plan progress and activities thru our website and Facebook page as well as LFUCG's Facebook page and Watershed Planning page.
West Hickman Watershed Management Plan (EPA Approved)
The WHWMP was approved by the EPA on July 15th 2023. LFUCG, Palmer Engineering and HCC plan to host a final West Hickman Watershed Council Meeting, open to the public. This meeting will involve presentation of potential projects, locations. Community members will be asked to select top 3-5 projects for the project team to focus on.
HCC plans to keep an active list of BMP implementation projects for the sake of monitoring and evaluation. If you have been, or would like to be involved in a BMP project in West Hickman, please contact HCC at info@hickmancreek.org. In the coming years, the project team will compare the number of implemented projects with a new round of water quality monitoring data. Based on these results, the WHWMP may be updated to include additional BMPs or target areas where there is a need for additional investment.
If you have any questions regarding this process please do not hesitate to contact Stephanie Blain (SBlain@palmernet.com) or Demetria Kimball-Mehlhorn (dkimball@lexingtonky.gov; 859-425-2554).
Proposed Interventions
As part of the planning, we asked citizens like you where there were problems and what solutions have been implimented in the watershed. Below is a map of all the proposed projects currently in the plan called "Best Management Practices or BMPs" that were selected for the plan in response to the concerns and suggestions we received from the public input survey.
Map of West Hickman Creek's Areas of Concern and Proposed Projects
Or click here to view the map on ArcGIS Online
To see a list of the proposed projects, navigate to content on the left sidebar, then click show table under WH BMP Projects and WH BMP Sanitary Projects.
