2018 Conference

Poster Presentation

College Lake has been a centerpiece of Lynchburg College (LC) for almost a century. Created by a dam built on Blackwater Creek in 1934 to provide flood control, it also became a recreational lake popular with generations of Lynchburg College students. But College Lake has changed substantially over time. Most notably, erosion created by development in the watershed upstream has filled the lake with tons of sediment that has washed downstream. While the dam on Lakeside Drive has prevented this sediment from entering the James River and damaging downstream habitat and water quality, it has also caused the lake to gradually fill in, shrinking its overall size and creating wetlands around its shores. Episodes of fecal coliform pollution from sewage leaks have also made recreation less appealing. The result is that what was once an attraction for members of the LC community has been largely forgotten or ignored, leaving a diversity of urban wildlife to utilize this growing habitat. In the meantime, the regulatory landscape has evolved as well. The water passing through College Lake along the course of Blackwater Creek is owned in common by and held in trust for the citizens of Virginia by their Commonwealth government. It is also part of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, hence falls within the purview of ever-more stringent stormwater regulations. Finally, the dam itself no longer meets state safety standards established for extreme flooding events. Within this complex urban ecosystem, a team of LC environmental studies capstone students and their professor set out to capture and interpret the environmental and cultural history of College Lake and present it in a multi-media website. This poster presents the results of this collaborative and interdisciplinary research in the digital humanities.