Twenty years after the No-Name storm closed a Plymouth marsh used by fishermen since the 17th century, a group of volunteers has succeeded in reopening an inlet to the sea to keep the marsh alive. The victory came after a hard battle — not against the elements but against regulators who wanted to let nature take its course.
The course that nature was taking since storms closed the Ellisville Marsh was turning a once-vibrant ecosystem into a mud flat, according to members of the volunteer group Friends of Ellisville Marsh. And environmental regulators in the state’s Coastal Zone Management office thought that was all right, they say.
The Friends spent three years and raised $85,000 to reopen the marsh’s historic channel to the sea, allowing water to flow into and out of the marsh with the tides. With the permits finally in hand, dredging was completed recently. As seawater surged in, dead marsh grass floated out, water scoured the marsh bottom, and gulls gathered to see if fish might be on the menu again.
Draining the marsh at low tide is essential to allow the primary vegetation — a marsh grass called spartina alterniflora — to survive, said Friends president Eric Cody. Without regular tidal alternations, the marsh grass was “drowning,’’ with fatal consequences for the whole ecosystem, he said.
But three-quarters of the money raised by the Friends was spent not on the physical work of dredging the marsh’s inlet channel but on fulfilling the requirements of the state’s permitting process.
“All we wanted to do was to protect fisheries and wildlife, and it’s mind-boggling what they made us go through,’’ Cody said.
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