Bringing back coastal treasures cont'd...

New Hampshire’s urban jewel

Local community groups–from con-servation commissions to a homeowners’ association–have initiated most of the salt marsh restorations in New Hampshire over the past few years, Ted Diers, a planner with the New Hampshire Coastal Program, says. Since the mid-1990s, the state has restored 720 of 1,200 acres (480 hectares) of salt marsh identified in a 1994 study as degraded by road culverts, bridges and other impediments. Four new projects will eventually result in an additional 70 acres of restored marsh. One of the most successful projects, Diers says, lies in the heart of an industrial area in the north side of Portsmouth.

Steven Miller recalls how a local businessman once referred to North Mill Pond as an eyesore that should be filled. But Miller and his group, Advocates for the North Mill Pond, viewed the 46-acre estuary fed by the tidal waters of the Piscataqua River and by the freshwater brooks on South Main Street as an urban jewel. Bordered by a railroad yard on one side and residential homes on the other, for decades the pond had served as the dumping grounds for everything from coal ash shoveled from steam engines to old tires and refrigerators.

Elizabeth Duff of the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s North Shore office welcomes the arrival of a new culvert at a marsh in Ipswich, MA. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Duff

The advocacy group was hatched in 1997, when local residents rallied to the pond’s aid and began organizing annual clean-ups and monitoring water quality and wildlife habitat. The Advocates have worked closely with Dr. David Burdick, a salt marsh expert from the University of New Hampshire’s Jackson Estuarine Laboratory. It was Burdick who helped plant a one-acre salt marsh along the pond’s rim in 1993 to compensate for marshes destroyed during the New Hampshire port expansion. Four years ago the marsh was damaged by an oil leak, killing a swath of vegetation. Since then, Miller’s group along with Ann Smith’s fourth graders from New Franklin Elementary School, have worked along side Burdick planting spartina grasses and stabilizing an upland slope with wildflowers and shrub roses. Under Burdick’s guidance, the grade schoolers have also re-seeded 2,500 ribbed mussels that have taken hold and continue to thrive. Students from the University of New Hampshire have joined in to plant grasses and collect data on phragmites growth and bird habitat.

“This was a very degraded system,” Burdick says. “We had to work on more habitats than just the marsh itself. That meant stopping the erosive forces that were killing the high marsh habitat, and planting mussels when we had no mussels at all.”

The Advocates continue to monitor the marsh’s progress and recently expanded their efforts to other parts of the watershed, Miller says. He adds that the City of Portsmouth, a key supporter of the restoration, is considering a plan to place a walkway along the pond that would adjoin an historic section of the city.

“This has been a great galvanizing thing,” Miller says of the project. “Where once there was blight we now have a gorgeous fringing marsh.”

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