An environmental group wants to allow salt water to flow again into the West River’s marshes, by replacing almost century-old tide gates. Neighbor Paula Panzarella (pictured), for one, worries that mosquitoes will return, too — and wild turkeys and elderberries might disappear.
Rich Orson, a PhD ecologist and habitat restoration consultant with Save the Sound, pitched the idea to three dozen neighbors last week at the Barnard School Nature Center at the corner of Derby Avenue and Ella Grasso Boulevard and abutting the river.
Orson said his project has three goals: improving water quality by allowing for the exchange of salt and fresh water, enhancing recreational opportunities, and allowing more fish to swim from Long Island Sound up the river. The existing tide gates, installed in 1920, have kept virtually all salt water out, destroying 130 acres of salt marsh in the process.
Save the Sound, a program of Connecticut Fund for the Environment, received federal stimulus money from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; $800,000 is earmarked for replacing the West River tide gates. Pictured are the existing tide gates.
Orson (pictured, demonstrating the flow of water with the new tide gates) said one of the rationales at the time for closing the tide gates was to keep mosquitoes from breeding in the area. It was part of the dredging and filling operation that created West River Memorial Park.
Panzarella, who owns a house just a few blocks away, said in almost 30 years her family has not been bothered by mosquitoes. She wanted to know if opening the tide gates would bring the mosquitoes back.
Orson responded that the whole ecosystem has changed so much that it’s impossible to say what impact the new plan might have on those pesky critters.
Everything in the natural world is linked to everything else, so trying to restore at least partially what humans destroyed earlier is fraught with a measure of uncertainty, he said.
After the meeting, Panzarella said it’s not just the mosquitoes she’s concerned about. “There’s a whole ecosystem that’s developed — rabbits, wild turkeys, possums, the phragmites that have grown, the elderberries, sumac, jewel weed,” she said. “The plants there are really nice. So to change it all now, I don’t see the reason.”
Jim MacBroom had an answer. A hydrologist and principal with the engineering firm Milone & MacBroom, he showed a PowerPoint presentation explaining how the new tide gates would work. (He’s pictured showing a scaled-down model of how they would open.)
“Salt marsh vegetation is more desirable” than the freshwater plants there now, McBroom said. Asked afterward why that’s the case, he said, “We have almost infinite opportunities to have freshwater riverine systems in Connecticut. We have many miles of freshwater rivers and freshwater marshes, even. But we have very limited opportunities for salt marsh. It’s limited to being on the immediate coast, and most of the coastline is now developed. It’s not to say that freshwater wetlands are not valuable, but that the salt marsh is much more rare.”
He also noted that engineers a century ago could have been wrong when they closed off the entry of salt water into the river in an effort to control mosquitos. “Actually, now we know that some of the areas that have dead water that isn’t flowing in and out with the tide are actually more productive for mosquitoes,” he said. Also, phragmites take over and push other native plants out, so one aim of the project is to push the phragmites back and allow other flora to gain a foothold.
In his presentation, MacBroom said a key goal is to make these changes without causing unnecessary flooding upstream. That led several residents to ask how the changes will be monitored. Orson said there’s funding to monitor changes for a year after the new tide gates go in. (Pictured are the existing tide gates.) That will provide a good baseline of information, he said He added that grad students from Southern Connecticut State University and perhaps other schools will monitor the area.
All the presenters emphasized their desire to work with the community. According to an information sheet passed out at the meeting, Milone & MacBroom will work with New Haven’s engineering department, the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, NOAA and Save the Sound to come up with a final design for the new tide gates. Then the plan goes before the Board of Aldermen and the Planning Commission for approval, then out for bid, then construction.
Chris Cryder, restoration director for Save the Sound, said after the meeting that the City of West Haven also must approve the project, even though the City of New Haven owns the land on both sides of the river and owns the tide gates and is responsible for their operation and maintenance. The target date for construction is fall of 2010. MacBroom said the project should take eight weeks to complete.