Despite federal and state challenges, resiliency (and native plants) grow in Baltimore wetlands
(Emily Hofstaedter)
Brad Rogers stands on a sinking fishing pier at the southern branch of the Patapsco River mouth. To his back is the MedStar Harbor Hospital in Cherry Hill. He faces south towards the Hanover Street wetlands at the very top of Brooklyn.
“There’s been a huge amount of erosion, a huge amount of environmental degradation,” he says, pointing to the Hanover Street Bridge. “The road you see next to us, Hanover Street, is the only way to get north towards downtown from that part of Brooklyn and northern Anne Arundel County. And yet the water has been eroding so strongly that eventually the road itself is going to get undermined.”
Often that means flooding, which severs the lower-income communities in Brooklyn and Curtis Bay from the hospital.
That road could be protected by a wetland, explains Rogers, the executive director of South Baltimore Gateway Partnership — the lead nonprofit on the Middle Branch Resiliency Initiative. Once finished, the 11-mile shoreline restoration project seeks to protect vulnerable communities from flooding, clean the water and provide a refuge for both people and animals.
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