Travis Ryan has been chasing turtles in the White River Central Canal for seven years, tracking their movements and counting their eggs.

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A colorful map turtle is one of several species that call the White River Canal home.(Frank Espich)

Ryan, a researcher with Butler University’s Center for Urban Ecology, said at least 5,000 turtles live in the canal. Each summer, the females lay tens of thousands of eggs in the muddy banks of the canal, above the water.

But Ryan fears this year’s baby turtles could be wiped out — literally entombed — by a planned construction project that winds along the canal southwest from about 62nd Street and College Avenue to 52nd Street and Boulevard Place.

The speed with which Veolia Indianapolis Water is moving also has angered canal users and environmentalists, who said they’ve been given insufficient notice.

“Veolia is inexplicably attempting to push through as fast as it possibly can,” said Clarke Kahlo, an environmental activist. “There has been no information provided about the environmental impacts.”

Veolia plans to rip out dying trees, disgorge obstructive brush and lay a quarter-inch thick sheet of material, covered by piles of stones, on the banks of the canal. The company said the project will prevent the banks from eroding, which causes water to seep and clogs the canal with soil and silt.

“All that erosion interrupts the flow of water to our filtration plant,” said Paul Whitmore, a spokesman for Indianapolis Water.

The work is scheduled to begin in late September and finish in December. The company has had one public meeting, and another is tentatively planned for September.

Veolia, a subsidiary of a French company, manages the city’s Department of Waterworks. Whitmore said the company needs to do the work by the end of the year for budgetary reasons, but no water emergency is prompting it.

“They said we have the money now so let’s get it done,” Whitmore said.

But Kahlo and Butler professors said the company is going too fast and should explore less intrusive methods to reduce erosion, such as dredging and laying the rock in spots.

“I want a full identification of the problem and an analysis of the available alternatives,” Kahlo said. “I would like to see a more nature-friendly treatment.”

Whitmore said the company is taking citizens’ concerns into account, and the final plan, expected next week, could be altered.

“We take input and could make changes,” he said.

Work would cover nests

The serene, tree-lined 7-mile-long Central Canal stretches southwest from Broad Ripple to about 30th Street and is the water company’s biggest reservoir of drinking water, serving 600,000 Indianapolis households.

Built in the 1830s, the shallow canal teems with six kinds of turtles, thousands of muskrats, geese, ducks and heron.

Veolia contends that some of the animals degrade the banks and slow the water flow. Whitmore said the project will prevent Canada geese from sliding down the slopes and stop muskrats from burrowing through the walls. The underlying mat will prevent tree roots and other plants from growing through the canal walls and loosening them.

Ryan, an associate professor of biological sciences, began studying the turtles in 2002. He’s trapped them, tagged them and put radio transmitters on them, even caught a poacher or two.

“I was curious as to how many there were,” he said. “So we put out some traps and caught 70 in one day. I thought it would be a good project for students to study them.”

Ryan said the canal banks that Veolia will cover are exactly where turtles make their nests. In fact, thousands of turtle eggs are incubating in the banks today. The babies born in September and October will wait out the winter in their nests and emerge next spring.

“But it looks like now that those nests will be covered up and those hatchlings will have no chance to join the rest of the population,” he said.

Ryan said foot-long map turtles and the smaller musk turtles are the most common in the canal and account for an estimated 1,750 reproductive females that lay 18,000 eggs a year.

Both turtles bury their eggs in the banks, though map turtles sometimes will trudge over the bank to nearby backyards to make their nests. The largest nests in the bank are 5 inches wide at the entrance and bigger inside, like a jug.

But after the mothers fill in the holes with dirt, it is nearly impossible to see the nests, which would make relocating them difficult.

“It would be like finding a needle in a haystack,” Ryan said. “The only way we know where they are is we watch the mothers go in them. But detecting them all by themselves is very painstaking.”

Indiana Department of Natural Resources spokesman Marty Benson said Veolia hasn’t sought any environmental permits for the work. He said a DNR permit would be required if animals were expected to be killed, moved or injured, but no one has alerted the agency that that could happen.

Benson said a complaint by a citizen could prompt DNR to review the plan.

Whitmore said Veolia had talked to DNR about the muskrats but not the turtles.

“They said muskrats are a nuisance,” Whitmore said. “But we have not addressed the turtles.”

A natural beauty

The canal is bounded on one side by a crushed limestone path and the other side by an untamed wall of trees and vegetation. The grass and dirt bank near the path and the rugged growth below are what, for 500,000 yearly bikers and hikers, give the canal its pastoral cachet.

“People come here because they know they are really interacting with wildlife, and right in the middle of the city,” Ryan said.

Some Northside residents said they were worried that the construction would strip the path of too many natural elements, leaving it a rock-lined chute of lifeless water.

“When I look out my back window, I see nature,” said Dhyana Raynor, a resident of Rocky Ripple, who lives steps from the path. “They are going to take Bobcats (machinery) and defoliate this whole area, rip it up, destroy the green stuff.”

Raynor criticized the lack of public input.

“There are several community groups with a lot of expertise that they could have sought out,” Raynor said. "But they didn’t. They could have said, ‘Here is our problem and can you help us with the solution?’ "

Sharon Butch-Freeland, executive director of the Broad Ripple Village Association, agreed.

“It seems this train is on the tracks and has left the station.”