(l. to r.) Dan Mundy Sr., Mike McGovern, and Dan Mundy Jr. at Elders West Marsh in Jamaica Bay.The decaying marsh islands of Jamaica Bay are coming back to life - plant by plant, at significant effort and expense.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently concluded a bold and backbreaking feat of environmental engineering, recreating 38 acres of vanished tidal wetland on Elders East Marsh in the northern portion of Jamaica Bay.
"It's thriving," said Len Houston, chief of the corps' environmental analysis branch in New York. "It's actually doing better than we anticipated."
Before the $13 million project began in spring 2006, small, fragmented pieces were all that remained of the once-vibrant marsh. The area had fallen victim to worsening dieoffs that some scientists predicted could eradicate all of the bay's tidal marshes by 2012.
The reconstruction required more than 300,000 cubic yards of dredged ocean sand, which was shipped to the site and pumped through a mile-long floating pipeline originating from the bay's eastern shore.
The mountain of sand was allowed to dry before being shaped with heavy machinery, then rooted with more than a million salt marsh grasses, all planted by hand. The transplanted grasses are growing faster than predicted, Houston said.
As long as funding continues from federal, state and city sources, roughly 48 acres of Elders West Marsh - originally joined to Elders East, forming a 130-acre island - will be rebuilt next year at a cost of $18 million. Plans also are in the works to reconstruct about 42 acres of a third marsh island, Yellow Bar, in 2009.
The success of the Elders East project has helped engineers learn important lessons that may help improve the success of future projects, and make them less expensive, Houston said.
For example, the salt grasses can likely be planted farther apart, requiring fewer plants. And in some cases, the grasses could be planted as seeds.
But the fate of Jamaica Bay's marshes rests with ongoing discussions aimed at developing a long-term plan for improving the bay's water quality.
Officials from the state Department of Environmental Conservation are negotiating with their counterparts at the city Department of Environmental Protection following the release of a long-awaited management report released by DEP this year.
A key aspect of those negotiations centers on reducing the amount of nitrogen pumped into the bay from four sewage treatment plants on the bay's shores. Some scientists have contended that nitrogen causes the marshes to deteriorate.
"This is the biggest thing that is going to affect the bay for the next 25 years," said Dan Mundy Jr. of Jamaica Bay Ecowatchers.
A DEC spokesman could not say when the negotiations would conclude, but environmental advocates and elected officials see the matter as a last chance to save the bay.
"Just as now is the time for the planet as a whole to take action on global warming, now is the time for the state and the city to take action on nitrogen in Jamaica Bay," said Councilman James Gennaro, who heads the Council's environmental protection committee.
The DEC is expected to make comments about the management plan by early next year.
