Backyard cleanup revives wildlife habitat

When P.J. Foley started mucking around in his swampy backyard on the Hough's Neck peninsula five years ago, he just wanted to get rid of the junk.

From beneath the towering reeds, he hauled out a rusty motorcycle frame, a washing machine, and more. Then he expanded his cleanup effort to the neighborhood, cutting down the 20-foot-high reeds that seemed to sprout everywhere. But - like in the Greek legend of Sisyphus, who rolled a boulder up a hill again and again only to see it come tumbling back down each time Foley cut down the reeds, they would quickly grow back.

As he worked, he became more aware of the marsh beneath his feet. His appreciation for his backyard began to grow. So did his understanding of marsh ecology.

Foley went from being a full-time Verizon technician who knew "zero, nothing" about marshes or environmental bureaucracies to a model for activist residents across the city and the state.

This year, thanks in large part to Foley's leadership, four wetlands areas on Hough's Neck - over 150 acres that were once blocked up, overgrown repositories for stagnant rainwater - are about to have their first natural season in decades. The tide flows in and out twice a day, keeping the weeds from growing back, waterfowl have begun to nest and feed, and minnows are breeding.

For a backyard cleanup movement to grow so far so fast is remarkable, say his Quincy neighbors who fill Foley's answering machine with enthusiastic reports of new wildlife in the marsh - and organizations like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association that have become partners in his crusade.

Foley says he's come a long way since his first grant application in 2000, when he sent an inch-thick stack of paper to the state's Office of Coastal Zone Management, and got back what he describes as primarily a rejection letter accompanied by a $6,000 "pity" grant for his enthusiasm.

In the years since, he's devoted weekends and vacation days to the project, and a growing number of successful grant applications and environmental permits have come his way.

"I don't know what you call it," the big-voiced man said on a recent afternoon during a tour of the marshes he's helped transform. "It's sure not a hobby."

Even though he is working to restore the land, Foley has faced the same permitting hurdles as a developer trying to turn the marsh into a strip mall, environmental officials told him apologetically. In the wake of Foley's efforts, officials at the US Environmental Protection Agency and NOAA have begun discussing changes to the labyrinthine federal permitting process, so that developers and conservationists don't have to jump through the same hoops.

Efforts like Foley's are "absolutely critical, particularly with an administration that isn't particularly friendly to the environment," said Congressman William Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat.

Foley now knows that what he once considered "weeds" are Phragmites australis, that "marsh grass" is ecologically prized Spartina alterniflora, that "minnows" are mummichog - and he can talk with ease about marsh ecology to a group of 100 neighbors as he did at a recent packed meeting, or explain one-on-one how to get national funding for a visiting group from Quincy's Squantum section.

As his terminology has changed, so has the marsh.

Neighbors who drive along Sea Street into Quincy Center now see a living marsh where a wall of reeds once stood. The living wetlands oscillates between looking like a mud flats and a lake twice each day with the tides. The mosquito population has gone down as minnows feed on larvae, and stagnant water has diminished. Ospreys are nesting on a tower standing in one of the marshes. It isn't unusual to see a great blue heron or a glossy ibis swoop down to catch fish, or stand motionless in the shallows while hunting for a meal. And homeowners who repeatedly lost siding or fences to fast-burning phragmites fires no longer have to stand watch in their yards, a hose at the ready, during the summer months.

"That's why we're here tonight, to see how they did it," said Jean Green, head of the Squantum Seaside Gardeners, who attended a recent talk by Foley. Her group is working on obtaining permits and funding to restore their own wetlands.

While Foley hasn't single-handedly saved the Hough's Neck marshes, he has fueled community involvement bringing everyone from Boy Scouts to elderly residents to the project, and reminding neighbors who have a marsh in their backyards that it is an important ecological system.

And the "marsh madness" isn't just a neighborhood cleanup: Foley obtained permission to bring heavy equipment like bulldozers into the marsh to dredge out tons of fill, and add new culverts that have restored tidal flow.

"The [full ecological] changes will take years to come, but what I've seen more than anything else is a change in public attitude," said Peter Shelley, vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental advocacy group that sought out Foley to award him a $15,000 grant earlier this year. "Marshes were associated with disease - these scary places people were always trying to pave, fill, cover, get rid of - and now projects like this" are changing those mistaken impressions, he said.

Arthur Knowlton, a neighbor who took charge of the 3.3-acre Parkhurst Marsh that sits just a few feet from his backyard, embodies that shift in attitude. His cleanup began as a personal project - an attempt to get some exercise - but it has also changed his view of his backyard, which he admits to "abusing" as a boy, building bonfires or throwing junk in it.

"I thought I'd open up the edge and get some green," he said. Then, as he cleared a small circle of reeds from the marsh, three snowy egrets flew above him. The next day, he cut a larger swath of the phragmites, exposing open water, and saw five snowy egrets land in the pool. For him, it was an epiphany.

Foley's hope is to instill such feelings of stewardship and pride in a widening circle of neighbors.

"There's nothing but good here," he said. "If we can do this on this peninsula, we can be a model for other communities in the Commonwealth."

Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.