Project Greenshores team addresses Driftwood club
BY BETTY ALLEN Gulf Breeze News news@gulfbreezenews.com

Marti Vickery & Betsye Haddock

The Driftwood Garden club met on February 22, at the New World Landing with Marti Vickery and Betsye Haddock as hostesses.

The program for this month featured representatives from the Department of Environmental Protection.

Cecelia Marrero, Environmental Specialist I Nursery Manager, Josiah Raymer, Biologist II and Leah McCue, Environmental Specialist/Dune Restoration gave an impressive description of Project Greenshores.

Project Greenshores is a habitat restoration effort that has created emergent and submerged saltmarsh vegetation along one mile of urban shoreline on the northwest shore of Pensacola Bay. The primary objective was to create a highly visible, habitatrich, educational shoreline restoration project that will serve as a model for other disturbed areas of estuarine shoreline.

The eastern, Phase I of the project was completed in 2003; Phase II began construction in 2005.

Though it uses the local, natural saltmarsh estuaries as a design guide, Project Greenshores serves as more than just increased vegetated habitat.

Offshore segmented breakwaters will provide wave protection for the marshes, and the breakwaters and saltmarshes will, in turn, protect a major highway immediately upland from erosion.

Cecelia Marrero, Josiah Raymer & Leah McCue spoke to the Driftwood Garden Club about Project Greenshores.

The marsh will help to improve water quality by serving as "kidneys" to filter and reuse nutrients from stormwater runoff, which currently enters the bay unimpeded. Pocket beaches formed by joining tombolos (sand and/or gravel bar) between the segmented breakwaters will invite nesting sea birds, while the narrow, sinuous, natural-looking inlets will invite canoeists and kayakers.

A nature trail will be constructed and educational signs to explain the important functions of coastal and estuarine habitats.

In addition, thousands of city dwellers are able to see this sight each day as they pass by in their vehicles.