The Baltimore Sun: Charred logs from Camp Small fire will help restore Patapsco wetlands (Christine Cordon)
Driving on I-83 one evening, Andrew Forbes saw the inferno.
It was Camp Small, the city’s recycling hub for fallen trees. And his company, GreenVest, was supposed to be using logs from the lumber yard in a construction project in South Baltimore.
“The first thing I thought was, ‘Oh my god. All of this is going to burn to the ground,’” said Forbes, a senior project manager at the company.
Some 2.5 acres burned in the Dec. 5 blaze, turning an estimated 10,000 tons of logs to ash, said Shaun Preston, yardmaster at Camp Small. But another 10,000 tons were still salvageable, though charred.
Some of those blackened logs will contribute to GreenVest’s project: Restoring wetlands in the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River.
Already, a few logs are lodged into the mucky river bottom near the MedStar Harbor Hospital, just barely poking above the waterline. The logs are part of a critical base layer for the new wetland, which will be planted this spring.
The organizers said the arrangement was a win-win: GreenVest, an environmental restoration company headquartered in Bowie, will purchase a haul of wood for its restoration site, and Camp Small gets to offload acres worth of burnt wood…
… For its project, GreenVest took about 1,000 tons of logs from the fire site, or about 40 dump truck loads, Forbes said. The company hopes to take even more logs from Camp Small for future wetland projects in the Middle Branch.
The ongoing project, the Hanover Street Wetland, is part of a much larger project called Reimagine Middle Branch, which aims to reestablish natural wetlands on about 11 miles of South Baltimore coastline, previously “hardened” by industrial activity, through the addition of bulkheads and other structures. It will also add features such as boardwalks and walking trails.
“We’re transforming the Middle Branch from Baltimore’s forgotten waterfront to Baltimore’s next great waterfront,” said Brad Rogers, executive director of the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership, which is a community group leading the Reimagine effort.