U.S. Water News Online
ST. MICHAELS, Md.-- A developer's plan to build an artificial wetland to support construction of a luxury housing project in this 300-year-old Eastern Shore town is being greeted with skepticism by some residents and environmentalists.
For developer George Valanos, the proposal to fill in 4 acres of the Miles River with sand and stone which would then be seeded with spartina grass would halt erosion and help the Chesapeake Bay.
But resident John North told The (Baltimore) Sun the developer's plan would produce little more than a landfill, thinly disguised with grass, that would let him build houses closer to the water than the state usually allows.
"The developer wants to take the people's river and fill it with mud and rocks so he can build closer to the river," said North, a retired judge and former chairman of the state's waterfront construction review commission. "What a terrible precedent. Are we going to fill up the Chesapeake Bay so these developers can build more houses closer to the water?"
The Miles Point project has been the subject of protests and lawsuits from neighbors for almost a decade.
The subdivision would increase the number of houses in this historic town by about 40 percent, adding 279 neotraditional homes priced from $500,000 to $900,000, along with tennis courts, a hotel, pool, park and pier. The subdivision would be built on 89 acres that today is mostly soybean fields and trees.
The roughly $150 million project would be protected from storms and waves by the wetlands, which would cost about $1 million.
If approved, the marsh project would enable construction of the Miles Point subdivision 150 feet from the river -- half the 300-foot setback usually required.
The state Department of the Environment and other agencies are considering Valanos' application. A public hearing has been scheduled.
But scientists are divided over the effectiveness of artificial wetlands such as the one proposed for Miles Point.
Zell Steever, a former senior ecologist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said the Miles Point wetlands would go farther into open water than normal, in a windy area not sheltered enough for marsh grass.
"There is no evidence this will last or improve water quality for the Chesapeake Bay," said Steever, who lives near the project.
The developer's engineers disagree. Officials with Environmental Concern Inc. of St. Michael's said they've built similar wetlands in open areas of the Miles River, Choptank River and Eastern Bay that have survived storms and succeeded in reducing erosion.
Kody Cario, the firm's construction manager, noted a wetlands built about a half-mile south of Miles Point that survived Tropical Storm Isabel in 2003.
Also at issue is whether building wetlands at the edge of waterfront housing is futile, given rising sea levels and the natural sinking of land on the Eastern Shore, said Ralph W. Tiner, a wetlands coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Rising waters devour about 260 acres of coastal land every year in Maryland.
J. Court Stevenson, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, said he recently studied eight artificial wetlands in Maryland and found that five had succeeded in preventing further erosion. But the wetlands built to protect houses generally did not attract much wildlife, because birds and animals tend to shy away from dense development, Stevenson said.
"In these wetlands restoration projects, it's really hard to bring some of these animals back," he said.
North, whose family has lived along the river since the 1700s and who served as chairman of the state's Critical Area Commission from 1989 to 2002, said believes a manmade marsh would be washed away by the river's strong waves, just as another artificial wetland north of his home was destroyed a few years ago.
"It's really a wildlife refuge here now -- we have thousands of geese, swans, muskrat, otter," he said, as sunlight flashed on the water. "To think of this shore crowded with houses and people kind of makes you sick."
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