May 15, 2009 7:51 pm US/Eastern
Grant Funds Help Efforts To Restore The Bay
ST. MICHAELS, Md. (WJZ) ―
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New grants funds will help create living shorelines one of many projects aimed at restoring The Chesapeake Bay.
CBS
Setting right what's wrong with The Chesapeake Bay can seem
overwhelming, unless you take it one small step at a time.
Alex DeMetrick reports, every day people are doing just that.
The Bay works best in places left alone and among the most critical are the shorelines.
Left to nature, they are lush buffers between land and water, but 60-percent of those wild shorelines have been lost.
The interplay of land and water sealed off by rocks and bulkheads.
"A lot of those methods to armor the shoreline, we've learned over time, are really not good for the habitat or living resources of The Bay," says Peyton Robertson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Bay office.
And those willing to put in the work, received nearly $700,000 in state and federal grants.
People like Eric Michelsen, whose homeowner's association received $100,000.
"We're actually experiencing about a foot or two of erosion per year on Bay fronted properties. So this both protects the properties from future erosion and creates enhanced habitats for widlife," said Michelsen of the Franklin Manor Citizens Association.
With projects like this one at The Maritime Museum in St. Michael's a man-made effort to restore the balance between land and water.
"It takes up the nutrients that are in the tidlewaters and it catches the pollutants and the attached nutrients that are running off the land," says Gene Slear from Environmental Concerns.
Since 2004 this program has built 20,000 feet of living shoreline. The Bay's grants will add another 6,000.
"This makes common sense, we have community groups that are prepared to change our shorelines into natural filtration systems rather than bulkheads we see all over the place, and that is going to protect the bay," says Maryland U.S. Senator Ben Cardin.
And even at one small piece at a time, life can be drawn back into the Chesapeake.
In addition to the grants received, money for the living shorelines come from Maryland's Save The Bay license plate sales.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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