Nearly half a million dollars in regional environmental grants were awarded on Thursday to three organizations working to manage the impact of climate change, pollution and sea level rise on Martha’s Vineyard.
Cong. Bill Keating joined Peter Wharton, chair of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, and Thomas Ardito, director of the Southeast New England Watershed Grant Program, to award $249,990 to the commission to implement a permeable reactive barrier to continue to improve water quality in Lagoon Pond, $242,000 to The Trustees of Reservations for salt marsh and barrier beach restoration on Chappaquiddick, and an additional $6,000 to The Great Pond Foundation to purchase water quality monitoring equipment.
“We’re leveraging science, technology, environmental expertise and we’re empowering the local communities to do what they know their needs are,” said Mr. Keating. “That’s what’s great about this program.”
The grants were awarded via the Environmental Protection Agency’s Southeast New England Program to empower the Vineyard community by funding projects that aid climate resiliency efforts around the Island.
“Nature is healing itself with watershed protection, with marshlands,” said Mr. Keating. “All we’re doing is aiding and literally channeling this, as is the case on Chappaquiddick, channeling nature so that it’s healing itself, and in the nitrogen issue, which is fascinating.”
A permeable reactive barrier was first installed at Lagoon Pond in 2020. According to Dr. Jessica Thomas, a professor of mathematics and physics at Roger Williams University, areas that have installed similar permeable barriers have seen 99 per cent reduction in harmful bioavailable nitrogen release.
“Permeable reactive barriers are an innovative technology for dealing with nitrogen,” said Ms. Thomas. “This is a technique that we can use to try to address that and it’s a natural technique.”
Nitrogen is a common ecological issue facing coastal communities and is most often released into the groundwater via nearby septic systems. Permeable reactive barriers are designed to function as a passive on-site method for groundwater treatment using seed oils to absorb excess nitrogen.
“We inject vegetable oil into the groundwater to intercept [nitrogen molecules] and that vegetable oil will create an environment for the natural microbes to take a bioavailable nitrogen, which is our problem nitrogen, and change it into nitrogen gas, which can off-gas right into the atmosphere and is the most abundant gas in the atmosphere,” said Ms. Thomas.
Following a brief discussion, those in attendance were invited to join Alejandra Narvaez, the coastal project manager at The Trustees of Reservations, on a tour of the salt marshes situated on Chappaquiddick. There, Ms. Narvaez discussed the history of salt marshes on the Island and how The Trustees plan to bolster areas that are highly susceptible to sea level rise.
According to Ms. Narvaez, models suggest that by 2070 the Dike Bridge, which grants access to various Chappaquiddick beaches via over-sand vehicles, will be submerged during daily tidal fluctuations.
“That’s why we’re intervening now,” she said during the tour. “We’re maintaining the natural vegetation to keep up with sea level rise.”
The process to protect salt marshes and barrier beaches involves a combination of efforts that include ditch remediation, which can take anywhere from three to five years, said Ms. Narvaez, and reconnecting channels via runnelling to reach an equilibrium and maintain natural tidal flow.
Typically, runnels are dug approximately seven inches into a salt marsh and are constructed in a ‘V’ shape to allow for natural reshaping as sea levels continue to rise.
“We want a light touch restoration,” said Ms. Narvaez. “We are basically remediating or healing these ditches.”