This restoration project seemed fairly straightforward at first blush: grade the pits, plant native species, and restore the freshwater wetland and upland communities back to the way they were before the area was mined. Then Tom reviewed a historic aerial of the site. “There was a creek there that was breached by the mining activities, which resulted in the creek being cut off from the natural flow patterns in the region,” Tom Ries explains. “As soon as I saw that, I thought, ‘well, we have to restore that creek.’”