Inside Climate News: Baltimore Is Investing in Wetlands Restoration, a Climate Line of Defense (Aman Azhar)
Brad Rogers and Brett Berkley stepped carefully on the gravel sill along the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River in South Baltimore, which when covered with sandy fill will serve as the bed for 11 acres of newly constructed wetlands.
Rogers, executive director of the nonprofit South Baltimore Gateway Partnership, has a big role in overseeing the $200 million redevelopment of 19 neighborhoods along one of the Chesapeake Bay’s most neglected shorelines. He aims to double that investment in the next five years.
He’s a bricks-and-mortar guy by trade, but wetlands, he said, are “the first line of defense” to protect those redeveloped neighborhoods against storm surge, and climate change.
Berkley, his environmental consultant, peered out as if he could see the future. “A successful restoration will depend on the construction of the sill, planting of native vegetation, and creating a gradual elevation change to support a diverse salt marsh ecosystem,” he said on a late summer afternoon.
Reclaiming Lost Wetlands One Acre at a Time
Rogers and Berkley had pulled into a narrow 700-foot-long driveway next to Hanover Street, freshly layered with gravel. It used to be a tangle of invasive vegetation, large perennial reed grasses called phragmites, debris and litter, all of which a construction crew had cleared recently so trucks could bring in rock and sand for the sill that would be the base to hold planted marshes along the river.
The smell of freshly cut plants and marshy water hung in the air. A giant excavator stood still in the distance. A construction worker was waist-deep in the Patapsco.
“He’s putting in the turbidity curtain in the river that will prevent debris from getting kicked up and carried into the main stem of the Middle Branch,” Berkley said, as he and Rogers walked along the sill.
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With $11.5 million in funding, the Hanover Street project will restore 11 acres of wetlands near the Brooklyn neighborhood and is expected to be complete by the end of 2025. It’s the first in the series of projects that would restore 50 acres of wetlands altogether along the 11-mile Middle Branch shoreline.
South Baltimore communities suffer from historic disinvestment, which make them vulnerable to extreme weather such as heatwaves, heavy rain and flooding. The wetlands will help make South Baltimore’s disinvested neighborhoods climate resilient and protect the critical infrastructure nearby—MedStar Harbor Hospital and an oil and gas facility owned by the utility company BGE.
But the task was not an easy one. Decades of urban development in and around the Chesapeake Bay watershed had fundamentally changed its historic outlook and that of its tributaries, including the Patapsco River. The onset of climate change and weather extremes put extra demand on mitigation strategies, including green infrastructure such as wetlands.
“During the 20th century, there was a focus on engineering solutions like concrete and stone to address issues like flooding. However, these solutions had limitations,” Rogers said, adding that New Orleans was a good example of a city now employing green solutions to address environmental challenges.
“In the 20th century, New Orleans was building gray infrastructure like dikes, flood walls and pumps to protect against flooding. Now, it’s restoring the damaged wetlands that protect the shoreline,” he said.
To protect South Baltimore’s neighborhoods from climate-amplified weather extremes, the sandy sill had to be prepared with rock and sand and then three months of waiting would begin. “When everything is settled, the sill is in place, and the base of the marsh is in place, it gets planted. And when it’s all done, it will look pretty incredible,” Rogers said.
Afterward, the wetlands will be reinforced with new vegetative berms to form a natural barrier against sea level rise, increasingly frequent storm surges and flooding, Berkley said.