HOMEABOUT ERPTHE ELIZABETH RIVER

Partners Help Restore River Wetlands

In June, the Corps began the first of a series of restoration projects for the Elizabeth River. In a funding partnership with the City of Chesapeake, the Corps is restoring tree-fourths of an acre of wetlands along Scuffletown Creek, off the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth.

"It's tremendous to see this project coming together and to be able to anticipate the next projects in line by the US Army Corps of Engineers - one of our most important partners," said Marjorie Mayfield Jackson, Executive Director, Elizabeth River Project. The Elizabeth River has lost 50 percent of her tidal wetlands since World War II. Wetlands are critical to filter pollution and provide widllife habitat.

A contract for a second wetland restoration by the Corps, at Old Dominion University, will be let shortly, said Robert Pretlow, project manager. Five more wetland restoration sites are in the wings in a partnership with all four watershed cities: Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach. Read the Corps of Engineers press release.

Meanwhile, a civic league, elementary and college students worked with the non-profit Lafayette Wetlands Partnership on a model for a community-based wetland restoration to replace a degraded shoreline on the Lafayette River in Norfolk at Colley Bay.

Dozens of volunteers worked for two weekends in June to remove 2,000 pounds of concrete and asphalt from the shore. For a more natural approach to erosion control, they graded the shore to the proper elevation for marsh grasses and planted a living shoreline. A partnership of Old Dominion University's Biology Graduate Student Organization, the Lafayette Wetlands Partnership, Larchmont Elementary School and the Highland Park Civic League, "the project is a terrific model for future community based restorations of urban wetlands," said Jackson, "and helps achieve our priority to bring back healthy wetlands."