Sandusky Bay wetlands program would aid many environmental goals

SANDUSKY — The planned new Sandusky Bay wetlands restoration project, fueled by an initial $1 million grant from the state to the City of Sandusky, would accomplish many worthy environmental goals, say state and local officials touting the project.It would:• Filter out nutrients from water flowing into the bay, reducing the size and frequency of harmful algal blooms in the bay. • Provide habitat for fish and birds. Fishing and birdwatching are both important tourist activities along the Lake Erie shore.• Provide a positive use for dirt taken from the lake bottom during dredging operations. Dirt currently is simply dumped back into the lake, a practice that the Ohio EPA has vowed to end by 2020.Sandusky Bay was once full of wetlands, said Matthew Kovach, Lake Erie Coasts and Islands project manager at the Sandusky office of the Nature Conservancy."We're trying to bring those back," he said.The project, currently in the planning stage, was discussed by state officials Monday in an event at Cedar Point, held in conjunction with the governor's Tuesday night State of the State speech at the Sandusky State Theatre.Phase One of the project calls for up to four wetlands to be built along the shore of Sandusky Bay, using dirt dredged from Sandusky harbor shipping channels.Possible wetlands locations, according to a map released Tuesday, include the mouth of Mills Creek, the mouth of Pipe Creek, the East Sandusky bay shore (including the mouth of Plum Brook) and Sheldon Marsh State Nature Preserve.Phase Two calls for a series of projects aimed specifically at reducing the nutrient loads from Sandusky River water flowing into the bay, and would include project at Edison Bridge and in Muddy Creek Bay, bordering Ottawa and Sandusky counties.Although state officials ceremonially presented a large foam check for $1 million to Sandusky's ex officio mayor, Dennis Murray Jr., at Monday's event, the state had already sent the money to Sandusky, which is studying proposals for carrying out the work.Scudder Mackey, chief of the Office of Coastal Management in Sandusky, said Monday he hopes design and engineering of rthe proposed wetlands will be done by the end of the year, providing projects that will be "shovel ready" when construction funding becomes available.While much of the focus of halting harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie has been on improving how farms use fertilizer, the Sandusky Bay Initiative shows that there are other useful things that can be done, Kovach said."We're trying to do what we can do downstream," he said.Kovach said numerous groups are serving as partners for the project, including the City of Sandusky, Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Office of Coastal Management in Sandusky, the ODNR's Division of Wildlife, the Ohio EPA, the Nature Conservancy and Old Woman Creek."Everyone's involved in this, and that's required," he said.Recent results from stream testing in Erie County showed that water released into Lake Erie from Old Woman Creek had significantly better water quality than water released into the lake from Pipe Creek or Mills Creek. That's a result of the filtering effect of the Old Woman Creek Estuary wetlands, said Bre Hohman, Firelands Coastal Tributaries watershed coordinator.Reach reporter Tom Jackson at jackson@sanduskyregister.com and follow him on Twitter @jacksontom.An Ohio Department of Natural Resources map shows planned locations for the Sandusky Bay Initiative wetlands. This is what Pipe Creek's mouth in Sandusky Bay will look like when wetlands restoration has been completed, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.