Environmentalists released a report Thursday that shows the saltwater marsh islands of Jamaica Bay are disappearing at an alarming rate.The report from a city-created advisory panel, the Jamaica Bay Watershed Protection Plan Committee, and Gateway National Recreation Area says 50 to 60 acres are lost every year. Moreover, the report finds that the marsh islands could be gone in five years, a big change from a state report in 2001 which suggested they could last until 2024.
Researchers are calling for a immediate action to save the marshes.
"This, to me, is a report that shows anybody that has any doubts, that if you look at this report and look at the statistics of this report, you will see that these marshes are disappearing at a rate that we can't control, and something's got to be done about it and it's got to be done now,” said Mundy.
"There really is no one that we have talked to that doubts that marsh loss is accelerating and this is an incredibly serious problem,” said Brad Sewell of the Natural Resource Defense Council.
The report says the loss will have a devastating impact on the area's ecology.
"If you lose the lower organisms the higher organisms feed on, then you are looking at a collapse of the whole bay ecosystem,” said Dough Adamo of the Gateway Natural Recreation Area.
The marshes also act as a flood plane for Brooklyn and Queens and prevent shoreline erosion.
The study says restoring the marshland would be very expensive. It recommends retrofitting sewage treatment plants to cut the amount of nitrogen in wastewater discharged into the bay. The study says too much nitrogen can kill the delicate plants that hold the marshlands together.
"We want to leave something here for our grandchildren and their grandchildren behind us," said Mundy.
The city Department of Environmental Protection says it's cut nitrogen levels in the wastewater by about one-third over the last decade, but it will take the findings of this report into account as it prepares an overall protection plan for the Jamaica Bay watershed, due out on October 1st.
-Roger Clark
