The 2023 upper Curtis Road Culvert Replacement Project (CRC) initiated by the Cortland County Soil and Water Conservation District allowed an opportunity for WRI to assess macroinvertebrate community changes in response to a road culvert enhancement and right-sizing project in the Town of Virgil. Streams associated with culvert crossings are often smaller than those associated with dam removal monitoring. Unlike dams open culverts, unless blocked by debris, do not impound water upstream. The degree to which undersized culverts and associated enhancement construction activities may have in influencing local aquatic life is unstudied. Perched culverts may be an obvious barrier to upstream fish movement, but to what effect inefficient hydraulic flows have on regulating macroinvertebrate populations in the immediate vicinity is has been understudied (Frankiewicz et al. 2021). The macroinvertebrate sampling regime at the Upper Curtis Rd culvert was a reduced version of the WRI dam monitoring process, accounting for the diminutive size of the stream, uncertainty of a discernable barrier signal, and practical budget considerations. The CRC ‘pilot’ study aims to increase our understanding whether under-sized culverts influence local hydrology enough to influence aquatic macroinvertebrate communities. The CRC study presents a pre/post enhancement comparison between two sampling locations, one within each upstream and downstream reach surrounding the culvert. The information gleaned from this study, particularly on macroinvertebrate populations surrounding culvert enhancement projects, will allow resource managers to make increasingly more informed decisions on prioritizing site selections, improving culvert construction protocols, and executing aquatic connectivity improvement strategies.