Watching Westport Waterfront Grow

If you’ve seen the Westport Waterfront site from the water lately (and I do most Tuesday and Thursday evenings from the seat of a crew boat), you’ll notice some changes including thousands of green sprouts of newly planted grasses.

On June 7^th, I joined thirty-five fifth and sixth graders from Westport Academy as they learned more about the environment.  As part of a month-long project, the National Aquarium led several hundred Baltimore-area school children who planted more than 16,000 smooth cordgrass plugs in the newly reconstructed tidal wetlands along the edge of the Middle Branch basin.  Students also released striped bass (also known as rockfish if you’re from Baltimore) that they had grown in their classrooms throughout the year.  The National Aquarium will bring the students back to help maintain the wetland as it grows over the next year.

Fox 45, WBAL and WJZ were on site to capture the students in action.

The wetland reconstruction is part of a public/private partnership to restore the ecology of the Middle Branch, which is home to abundant populations of fish, birds and other wildlife, but has suffered from degradation due to decades of industrial activity.  Wetland restoration in the Middle Branch is a key priority of Baltimore City as it focuses on redeveloping the Middle Branch watershed as Baltimore’s “green harbor.”  The abandoned industrial buildings that we used as sight points to guide our boats are gone.  In their place, a sustainable neighborhood is being built.  The Westport Waterfront wetlands are the first phase of what will be an exciting project to watch.

photos by Wink Hastings, C-Kat Studios 2010