The 82 acres of marsh at Rocky Neck State Park in East Lyme are a crucial part of the state’s ecosystem.
They not only provide a buffer zone during powerful storms, they also boast the largest population of alewife in Connecticut.
The fish is “foundational to the food chain in the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic,” said Jessica Cañizares, director of Coastal Ecosystem Projects with The Nature Conservancy in Connecticut.
But this limited resource has been rapidly disappearing over the decades, she said. The evidence that the marsh is unhealthy is very apparent if you know what to look for, including substantial vegetation loss and expanding open pools of water.
The problem is twofold: rising sea levels and man-made constraints that prevent a full tidal exchange, according to Tim Clark, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Resilient Southeastern Connecticut Program.
"Maximum high tide is not coming all the way in and the lowest low tide is not going all the way out,” Clark said.
That means the marsh is staying wetter for longer. That added weight “causes all of the soil to sink and take the vegetation down with it,” he said.
A $4 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will be used to help.
The money is coming from the agency's Transformational Habitat Restoration and Coastal Resilience Grant Program.
The Nature Conservancy and several other groups, including the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, will use the money to design ways to restore the marsh and improve water flow between it and Long Island Sound.
“How we deal with a developed coastline is we acknowledge the reality that we're working in,” Clark said. “When we do those studies, when we develop those models, we're going to incorporate things like the Amtrak bridge and the kind of development pressures that exist, and then design a system that works around it.”
The Nature Conservancy won’t just work in a scientific vacuum. They want input from park visitors — including feedback if the state should be providing new ways to access to Rocky Neck State Park, or providing more educational purposes to the location.
“If you're coming in a wheelchair, if you're coming with mobility constraints, we want to make sure that you're able to use the park to its fullest potential,” Clark said.
The money to fund this three-year planning stage was made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.
