POPLAR ISLAND ENVIRONMENTAL RESTORATION PROJECT: ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING AND THE ROLE OF CONSENSUS BUILDING

摘要

The Poplar Island Environmental Restoration Project (PIERP) was designed to reconstruct Poplar Island to its approximate size of 1847 using clean dredged material from Chesapeake Bay approach channels to the Port of Baltimore. Island restoration will create 460 hectares (1140 acres) of wildlife habitat through placement of approximately 32 million cubic meters (42 million cubic yards) of clean dredged material. A collaborative, multi-disciplinary team, called the Working Group, developed the monitoring framework. This group is comprised of personnel from State and Federal agencies, universities, private consultants and local government representatives. This framework details monitoring that is being performed to ensure regulatory compliance, to document the creation of beneficial habitat, to confirm the expected findings of no significant negative impacts, to provide operational input on the success of habitat creation and potential changes which will increase the habitat value and utilization, and to provide concurrent peer review of the monitoring effort. The Working Group and its associated Habitat and Monitoring Subgroups assist the Project Team with determining what, if any changes need to be made to the project and/or monitoring based on the results from the monitoring studies. Monitoring elements include: exterior sediment quality, wetland soil and vegetation monitoring, exterior water quality, construction/turbidity monitoring, discharge monitoring, benthic community and tissue monitoring, fisheries use of exterior proximal water, wetlands use by fish and wildlife, bird utilization counts, submerged aquatic vegetation monitoring, shellfish bed sedimentation, interior water quality/algae monitoring, and terrapin monitoring. A new environmental component of the project is the development of a framework to evaluate the quality of the dredged material for wetland and upland habitat restoration. The goal of the process is to gain a better understanding of how the characteristics of placed dredged material can limit or enhance the establishment of restored upland, wetland, and aquatic communities.