State grants aimed at boosting marshlands

Habitat in five coastal communities is focus of $200,000 regional effort

State grants will be used to monitor the health of salt marshes, such as this one in Essex, in the communities of Gloucester, Beverly, Ipswich, Salisbury, and Newbury. (Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff/File 2001)

New state grants will help continue the effort to restore the region's salt marshes, specifically in Gloucester, Beverly, Ipswich, Salisbury, and Newbury.

Salem Sound Coastwatch ($33,400) and the Massachusetts Audubon Society ($7,116) were North Region recipients in the latest round of grants totaling $200,000 from the state Office of Coastal Zone Management's Wetlands Restoration Program.

Founded in 1994, the program and its partners - which include municipalities, federal agencies, conservation organizations, landowners, and others - have completed 57 projects to restore 720 acres of coastal marshes that had been degraded primarily because man-made structures had cut off the flow of salt water to upstream tidal wetlands.

Much of the remediation is replacing culverts with larger openings, and restoring tidal flow.

"One analogy that you can use is blocked arteries," said Hunt Durey, program manager. "The tidal flushing of coastal wetlands is really the lifeblood of the habitat that those wetlands support. When you have full, unrestricted tidal flushing of these marshes they function in a very healthy way for all the fish and birds and everything else that they support. When you build a road or other type of infrastructure across the tidal creeks and put in culverts that are too small to allow the full tidal range to get up into those marshes, it has a degrading effect, just as if you have a blocked artery or restricted blood flow to the heart.

"What we do is remove the blockage, and allow the tides to fully flush the marshes upstream."

Most of the funding will go to monitoring. Both Salem Sound Coastwatch and Mass. Audubon rely on "citizen scientists" - often students - to conduct surveys that reflect conditions before and after restoration. Information can be used for permitting and in grant applications, or to determine if the remediation has been successful.

"There's no way that Salem Sound Coastwatch, with a staff of two people, can do all of this monitoring," said Barbara Warren, executive director. "It's really important that we have citizen scientists."

The 43-acre Mill River (sometimes called Mill Pond) project in Gloucester is an example. The project is headed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with the Ccty of Gloucester and has several other partners, including both Salem Sound Coastwatch and Mass. Audubon. Two years ago, a gate that blocked off tidal flow was opened, allowing the pond to drain with the tides.

Salem Sound Coastwatch volunteers will dig in the mud of the tidal flats, to form an assessment of its clams and worms. "Our goal is to establish a baseline and see what's growing after two years," Warren explained.

For Mass. Audubon, sixth-graders from the O'Maley School in Gloucester will help monitor the salinity of water, plant life (including the spread of phragmites, a common reed associated with a degraded salt marsh), birds, and fish both upstream and downstream of culverts

"For us, it's sometimes part of a school curriculum," said Liz Duff, education coordinator for Mass. Audubon's Salt Marsh Science Project. "Because of that, we have up to 11 years of data on different sites we're monitoring. When I talk to scientists, it's almost unheard of to get that kind of long-term data."

Duff noted that she has 11 years of data for salt marshes in Ipswich and Rowley, and 10 years of data on marshes in Essex, Gloucester, Salisbury, and Danvers.

Audubon will also run monitoring projects in Salisbury and Newbury.

Students from Governor's Academy in Newbury will help monitor the 6.3-acre Duff's Woods (no relation) abutting the campus, for preliminary data that may be used in a restoration effort.

Another project will be to monitor the 117-acre Town Creek, near Route 1 in Salisbury. The state is interested in restoration of that site because the restrictions are believed to be responsible for both degraded habitat and flooding.

"If you're blocking the tide on the way in, you're also blocking drainage on the way out," Duff noted.

Salem Sound Coastwatch will have its volunteers monitoring four sites, including a healthy salt marsh on Little Neck in Ipswich, which will be used as a reference site. It will also monitor two sites for potential restoration: Thissell Marsh in Beverly, on the grounds of Endicott College, and a marsh on Newman Road in Newbury. It will also monitor a salt marsh on Eastern Point in Gloucester that was restored in 2003.

Among the volunteers Coastwatch will utilize are students from Endicott College, who will also participate in another project funded by the grant: the permitting of a restoration project for Thissell Marsh, where plans call for the replacement of a 4-foot-by-4-foot culvert with a larger one.