Navy's Shoreline Project is Largest in Chesapeake Bay Watershed
Navy NewsStand
Story Number: NNS081029-20
Release Date: 10/29/2008 4:31:00 PM
By Gary R. Wagner, Naval Support Activity South Potomac Public Affairs
INDIAN HEAD, Md. (NNS) -- The Navy has embarked on the largest shoreline stabilization project in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The multi-year effort will not only protect critical military infrastructure but will also improve water quality and establish habitat to support aquatic wildlife.
The remains of an asphalt road follow the edge of a crumbling bluff towering 30 feet above the river's edge below. Pieces of concrete building slabs are all that's left of former technical facilities that had to be vacated and demolished because of the encroaching shoreline.
The Naval Support Facility (NSF) in Indian Head, Md., situated on a long peninsula bounded by the Potomac River and the pristine Mattawoman Creek watershed, was losing about one-and-a-half feet of real estate per year along stretches of the base's 17 miles of waterfront.
But, thanks to emergency congressional funding and with the support of local and regional conservation groups, the Navy has embarked on the largest shoreline stabilization project in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
"The Chesapeake Bay is a national treasure, and the shoreline restoration at Indian Head is one of many projects in which DoD is investing to revitalize the bay," emphasizes Donald Schregardus, environmental deputy assistant Secretary of the Navy. "The project also represents a significant long-term investment in the Indian Head facility and community."
At the average annual erosion rate of 1.5 feet per year, approximately 12,000 cubic yards of sediment per year was entering the surrounding waterways. NSF Indian Head developed a shoreline management plan in 2002 that surveyed shoreline erosion along the installation's waterfront. The plan prioritized areas that needed immediate attention and recommended actions to manage shoreline erosion to protect existing infrastructure at the base, improve water quality and enhance terrestrial and aquatic wildlife habitat.
After Hurricane Isabel further exacerbated shoreline erosion on the base, the Navy received $5.2 million in hurricane relief funding. The money was used to fund the design, permitting and construction of the initial phase of the shoreline stabilization project. Additional phases are planned and dependent on funding through fiscal year 2010.
With the support of the Southern Maryland Resource Conservation and Development Board and the Charles Soil Conservation District, work began in November 2007 with the construction of a series of breakwaters and sills along approximately 3,500 feet of the eastern shore of the Potomac River. These stabilization efforts will greatly reduce or eliminate impacts of wave action on the shoreline. As a result, approximately 2,900 feet of shoreline will naturally stabilize.
In addition, extensive erosion along a 600-foot section of the stabilized shoreline required bank grading to stabilize the slope and protect two office buildings within 35 feet of the top of the shoreline.
Behind the breakwaters and sills, an area of nearly 11 acres was backfilled to create more than an acre of intertidal vegetated wetland habitat and 9.5 acres of wetland habitat suitable for scrub-shrub, riparian floodplain forest and upland trees and shrubs.
"This project uses state-of-the-art design to minimize the facility's impact on the environment," Schregardus points out. "It is also an example of fiscal stewardship. The Navy has been able to achieve more while reducing its costs through partnerships with the National Aquarium in Baltimore, the Southern Maryland Resource Conservation and Development Board, and the Charles Soil Conservation District."
The National Aquarium in Baltimore, through a partnership with NSF Indian Head, mobilized volunteers for two field planting events to complete the first phase of the shoreline project. For the first event in July 2008, more than 40 participants spent two days to place 10,000 wetland plants along approximately 1,700 feet of Potomac River shoreline. Plantings occurred in the intertidal wetland zone created by placing sediment behind the sills and breakwater that have been constructed in the initial phase of the shoreline restoration project.
In a second field planting event that spanned four days this month, more than 70 volunteers from communities throughout Maryland and Virginia labored to plant native wetland grasses, shrubs and trees.
David Nemerson, conservation biologist for the National Aquarium who directed the four-day project, estimated that volunteers logged a total of nearly 1,000 hours of labor.
"We typically work on three or four projects a year of this size and scope," he explained. "But we tend to do more in Chesapeake Bay proper," as opposed to freshwater tributaries like the Potomac, he added.
Altogether, between the two field events, the volunteers placed 15,000 wetland plants in the intertidal zone of the shoreline as well as 1,400 trees and shrubs in a riparian floodplain zone.
The riparian floodplain zone extends from the mean high water line to the toe of the existing slope of the shoreline. This area, once revegetated, will increase protection of the toe of the existing slope, enhance wildlife habitat and improve water quality.
Most of the volunteers, who spent one or more days working on the shoreline and camping overnight in nearby Smallwood State Park, hailed from distant communities throughout Maryland and Virginia.
Jeanette Bitzel from Westminster, Md., in Carroll County has worked on conservation projects for two years with the Maryland Conservation Corps, as a volunteer with AmeriCorps.
AmeriCorps is a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, an independent federal agency whose mission is to foster civic engagement through service and volunteering. Each year, AmeriCorps offers opportunities for adults to serve through a network of partnerships with local and national nonprofit groups to address critical needs in communities across America, to include tutoring disadvantaged youth, building affordable housing, cleaning parks and streams, or helping communities respond to disaster.
Bitzel, who also recently worked with a volunteer project at Assateague Island National Seashore, was impressed by "the horrible amount of erosion the river was causing" along the Naval Support Facility Indian Head shoreline.
"What this project is doing is to help build up the shoreline to function as a healthy ecosystem," she said.
Nemerson quipped that the volunteers experienced "instant gratification" for their labor. "During one day of the field event a flock of blue birds swooped down to perch on trees (planted by the volunteers) that had only been in the ground 30 minutes."
"On behalf of the Navy, I thank the volunteers for their hard work and congratulate them on a job well done," said Schregardus. "This project restores the natural functioning of the shoreline, and the work performed over these past five days provides a long-term solution to shoreline erosion, expands aquatic habitat, improves water quality, and protects important Navy assets."
With the completion of the second round of plantings, approximately 3,500 feet of shoreline has been revegetated in the initial phase of the shoreline stabilization project.
In the broadest perspective, said Schregardus, "This project is good for the Chesapeake Bay, the surrounding environment, the Indian Head community and the economy."
For more news from Naval Support Activity South Potomac, visit www.navy.mil/local/NSASP/.
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