Jamaica Bay Ecosystem in Crisis

The following is an excerpt from an article published in the Gotham Gazette:

Taking Action On Jamaica Bay
by Sam Williams
Mar 2004

Time and tide wait for no man, but in the case of Jamaica Bay and its marsh islands, decades of human inactivity have given the forces of nature an especially dramatic head start. That's why, though scientists still do not have a real explanation for the alarming erosion of one of the most important wildlife refuges in the United States, a number of short-term remedies are moving forward.

"Emergency situations require drastic action," says Dan Mundy, founder of Ecowatchers, a group of Broad Channel and Howard Beach residents that first publicized the crisis six years ago; according to a 1999 study, the 13,000-acre bay was losing up to 45 acres of vegetation and wetlands every single day. "The patient is dying and we've got to try anything available."

"Anything" in this case means the Army Corps of Engineers, an organization once regarded as the No. 1 enemy of U.S. wetlands by environmental groups. Thanks to an institutional change of heart -- motivated in large part by the Water Resources Development Acts of 1986 and 1992 -- the 229-year-old civil engineering wing of the U.S. military is now a leading player in the battle to reclaim lost swamps and marshland.

For New York, that means bringing Jamaica Bay and the non-commercial sections of the Hudson and Raritan River estuary systems back to a semblance of their original state. The Army Corps of Engineers will take the first step in that long journey this spring when it begins to level the banks of Gerritsen Creek, a Marine Park waterway that empties west of Floyd Bennett Field. Using bond funds from the New York City parks department and a small portion of its own $25 million special projects war chest, the corps plans to spread the resulting materials into the waterway at levels amenable to native grasses such as Spartina alterniflora (smooth cord grass), a primary food source for migrating waterfowl.

The Gerritsen Creek project is a signal move, representing one of the first major shifts away from studying the problem to reversing the problem.

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Read the entire article here. You can read the US Army Corps of Engineers Gerritsen Creek Ecosystem Tidal Marsh & Coastal Upland Community Restoration project description and bid abstract here. From the abstract:

"The Gerritsen Creek project site targeted for ecosystem restoration is an approximate 67-acre site that lies within the Jamaica Bay watershed in Marine Park, Brooklyn, New York. The project will restore approximately 48.2 acres of habitat, including 21.3 acres of inter-tidal salt marsh and 26.9 acres of coastal/maritime grassland by excavation, sediment placement, re-contouring and native species planting."

I'm not sure how restoring 67-acres on the east side of the creek will be beneficial to the ecosystem when a few hundred acres on the west side are allowed to be trashed by ATVs, motorcycles and the burning of stolen cars. Perhaps parks Commissioner Benepe or District Manager Larry Major can explain it.