Maryland digs deep to reclaim islands swallowed by Chesapeake Bay

Not that long ago, the Chesapeake Bay was home to hundreds of scattered islands. Migratory birds nested in them, and blue crabs hid in their marshes. Some served as waypoints for Algonquin-speaking tribes and, later, homes for settlers and watermen.

Over the last two hundred years, though, erosion accelerated by storms and rising seas has drowned many of these islands. Now, federal engineers are hard at work rebuilding a glimmer of those lost lands.

For close to three decades the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has worked to restore one eroded land mass, Poplar Island, off the Eastern Shore. And this summer, an Army Corps team launched work to reconstruct two more islands farther south in the bay.

The engine behind these projects is the hum of commerce at the Port of Baltimore. Shipping lanes need constant dredging to accommodate cargo vessels, and the Maryland Port Administration has long looked to Poplar as a place to dump tens of millions of cubic yards of bay muck.

The Army Corps expects the rebuild of Poplar Island to cost $1.4 billion at its completion. This spring the agency earmarked $54 million for work at Barren and James islands to the south, a down payment on a new chapter in island building expected to cost the Army Corps and MPA billions over the next four decades.

At least one ecologist says the bay’s rising tides will eventually swallow many of the marshes that fill these islands. But even if they’ve disappeared a century from now, restored Chesapeake islands provide important habitat for bay species that have lost much of it, said Lorie Staver, a plant ecologist who has spent two decades studying Poplar Island.

“In my mind, this is a way to buy time,” she said.

‘These are real benefits’

One recent morning off Hooper’s Island in Dorchester County, a construction crew laid a bed of cinderblocks along the sand, soon to be covered by oyster shells. Big boulders the Army Corps calls “armor stone” lined the backs of the makeshift land mass against storms and incoming tides. In the distance, excavators and barges bobbed on the water.

“If you protect them like this, they’ll be here for a long time,” said Sean Fritzges, a construction representative for the Baltimore District of the Army Corps.

Work to rehab Barren Island is well underway, and within weeks Fritzges and his team expect to lay perimeters for the future James Island — a restoration expected to surpass the size of Poplar. Barges will eventually ferry sediment from the shipping channels of the Upper Bay, to be siphoned into the foundations of James Island through powerful hydraulic tubes.

Over its 250-year history, the agency is probably more famous for building dams, manipulating rivers, draining the Everglades for farms and charting some catastrophic cost overruns.

The Army Corps and MPA say Poplar is among the first island reconstruction projects of its kind in the world. They expect the island will reach its dredge limit in the early 2030s, after which the port will direct spoils to James Island.

Located about a mile off Dorchester County, the island named by colonists for the apostle James barely crests the bay’s surface at low tide today. Under the Army Corps’ plan, it will grow larger than when colonists found it in the 17th century, adding 2,072 acres, most of it new wetland habitat.

The restoration of Barren and James islands is expected to cost $3.9 billion and stretch to 2067. The MPA expects to cover 35% of the James and Barren projects.

Though low-lying marsh lands will eventually fade back into the water, research by Staver, of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, has found that these manmade ecosystems are resilient. Wetlands can rise with the tides, Staver’s research shows, persisting for decades even as bay waters encroach.

Katie Perkins, an Army Corps project engineer helping to lead the Mid-Bay rebuild, said that in the early days of work on Poplar, environmentalists were skeptical. Some suspected the island was a dredge dump “that we were just pretending was an ecosystem project.”

But Perkins said much of that initial skepticism has faded, and Dave Nemazie, chief operating officer for UMCES, sees island restoration as the best outcome.

“I think what was more controversial was not rebuilding islands,” said Nemazie, who recalled the blowback when the Army Corps and scientists looked into burying dredge spoils in a deep part of the bay in the 1990s.

That practice, called “open water disposal,” is banned in the Chesapeake today, a decision that Lisa Wainger, an UMCES professor, said leaves Maryland without cheaper options for its dredge spoils.

An analysis Wainger conducted for the Army Corps in 2005 found Barren and James islands offered by far the most economic disposal options. She has since estimated that these Mid-Bay islands will bring around $150 million in new value to the immediate area, including through shoreline protection, fishing and wildlife watching.

Not included in her calculation is the lasting legacy: more birds, more fish and a healthier bay.

“These are real benefits,” she said. “They’re not just things that tree huggers like.”

An oasis resurfaced

As recently as the mid-1800s, Poplar covered over 1,000 acres and was home to a small community that lived and worked on the island. By 1990, barely five acres remained.

Today the island is bigger than it was in the mid-19th century, and port officials and environmentalists praise its marvels. Birders love it.

In April, a group of UMCES environmental scientists packed onto a ferry for a visit. They ogled at the vast ecosystem, a window into a Chesapeake Bay outpost of generations past.

“A loon! A loon!” chirped Judy O’Neil, a plankton expert, on the boat ride over. She added later: “I’m gonna interject every time I see a bird.”

The process of restoration was a bit like building a jigsaw puzzle, said Julia Moya, an environmental specialist with Maryland Environmental Services who led the scientists around the island. As with a puzzle, she said, builders began with the edges.

The modern Poplar testifies both to the Army Corp’s investments in the environment and global commerce. A plaque near the dock commemorates the career of William R. Murden, a 20th century Army Corps engineer who championed “enlightened dredging” and became known as “Mr. Dredging.”

From above, the island looks boxy and geometric, but the birds and diamondback terrapins don’t seem to mind. Poplar is a reinvented wilderness, lush with tall grasses, trees, sprawling wetlands and birds. Birdwatchers there have recorded sightings of more than 280 species.

“It may not be exactly what was lost,” Staver said, “but it works.”