For decades, this prominent shoreline along the banks of the Potomac River at Piscataway Park, administered by the National Park Service, has been giving itself away bit-by-bit to forces of erosion. Storms, waves, tides, and rising sea levels have scoured its banks, uprooted its trees, and displaced plants and animals. In 2010, the Alice Ferguson Foundation and its partners completed an innovative project to protect the shoreline — a stabilized “Living Shoreline” that can give-and-take with the powerful Potomac River.
This project restored 2,800 feet of shoreline creating two acres of spawning and nursery habitat for more than a dozen fish species, reduces shoreline erosion, improves water quality and provides protection for more than 30 acres of freshwater wetland and threatened Native American archeological sites nearby. It is one of 50 high priority projects funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to restore coastal habitat along the nation’s coasts and help jumpstart the nation’s economy. Under ARRA, NOAA was provided $167 million for marine and coastal habitat restoration. NOAA selected their projects from a pool of 814 proposals, totaling more than $3 billion in requests. Under the Recovery Act, NOAA was provided $167 million for marine and coastal habitat restoration.
Twelve companies and one non-profit organization were involved in the Piscataway Park project over a fifteen month period. They ranged from the project designers and construction firm and their sub-contractors, to truckers that hauled over 1,400 loads of sand and rock to the site. All but two of the companies involved are based in the State of Maryland.
Thousands of school children visit AFF’s Hard Bargain Farm Environmental Center each year. Virtually all of these students visit Piscataway Park along the shoreline and across the wetlands. The restoration project enhances AFF’s educational use of the shoreline and saved AFF’s access to Piscataway Bay for the canoe program, as the erosion had caused the existing road to slump down the bank and into the river..
The project is just ten miles downriver from Washington, D.C. and, as such, is the shoreline restoration project closest to the nation’s capital. It is the largest freshwater, tidal, high energy site living shoreline project in the region. Most have been completed in saltwater or brackish water areas; the freshwater projects are usually much smaller in scope and are constructed along small streams.
Today the Living Shoreline gives hope for the continued protection of the shore, wetlands, and surrounding historic lands.
