For Release: November 5, 1997

Contact: Stephanie Powell 277-2771 ext. 4418

Andy McLeod, Director of the RI Department of Environmental Management, and Lt. Col. Michael W. Pratt, New England District Engineer, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, hosted a ceremony on site today at 11 a.m., coinciding with high tide, to announce the completion of the construction phase of the Galilee Salt Marsh Restoration Project in Narragansett.

Recently completed installation of culverts, tide gates, and tidal channels by the Army Corps means that the 128 acre Galilee Salt Marsh and Bird Sanctuary, largely cut off from tidal flows since a road building project in the 1950s, is flowing again with sea water and is beginning a regeneration process that will transform it back to a highly productive fish and wildlife habitat of benefit to the community and state.

The restoration project, overseen by DEM, is the first major salt marsh restoration project undertaken in Rhode Island. It began in 1991, with construction of the culverts, tide gates, and tidal channels commencing one year ago.

The construction to restore the salt marsh habitat within the Galilee Bird Sanctuary in Narragansett is returning a total of about 84 acres of salt marsh habitat and nearly 14 acres of open water in new tidal channels to the Galilee Bird Sanctuary.

The disposal and placement of fill material from navigation and road construction projects in the 1950s had significantly restricted tidal flow to the marsh. Before the current restoration began, less than 20 aces of salt mash and open water existed in the sanctuary of which about nine acres was vegetated salt marsh supported by tidal flow.

Over the next several months several changes will begin to take place. The most noticeable effect of the return of salt water tides will be the killing off of many of the small trees and shrubs that grew in the marsh over the last 35 years. There will also be a two to three foot reduction each year in the height and density of the tall reed Phragmities that dominates much of the area until it is eventually replaced by the native salt marsh grass Spatina. It may take as many as ten years for the vegetation to be replaced and the marsh fully restored.

Many other positive changes are already occurring in the Bird Sanctuary. With the reopening of the marsh to tides, many small fish and crabs are returning to the area to inhabit the new tidal creeks. Many of the wetland birds - ducks, geese, herons, egrets, and shorebirds will come to the newly created habitats and increased opportunities to observe these beautiful species will occur. DEM expects the marsh will become a nursery area for commercially important fish species like the winter flounder and various shellfish will reinhabit newly created tide flats and channels.

Plans are being made to develop a small visitor's center with an observation platform and possibly boardwalks into the marsh to teach people about the Galilee restoration and the value of salt marshes. In the next several years, the Galilee Bird Sanctuary will be transformed into a highly productive fish and wildlife habitat of benefit to the community and state.

History, construction data attached