The problem was vividly described by an environmental scientist and a certified professional geologist in a 2017 op-ed ("It's not restoration if the result is death"), nine years after completion of the Sesuit Creek project in 2008. Today, the "restored" wetlands remain dominated by barren mudflats, and the creek banks are ravaged by erosion, as documented by the images below. Efforts by the Association to Preserve Cape Cod to restore the lush marsh grass that previously occupied the "restored" area were unsuccessful. (See the link to the association's declaration of success below.) A state agency commissioned two University of New Hampshire ecological scientists to study the aftermath of the tidal restoration: "Restoration Monitoring and Evaluation, Sesuit Creek" (2017). They identified a probable cause but could not offer a solution that worked.
The Sesuit Creek project managers anticipated the die-off of freshwater vegetation once seawater tidal flows were increased by installing a new culvert under Bridge Street. The failure of Mother Nature to heal the marsh by promoting growth of salt-tolerant flora was not evident until approximately 2 years after tidal flow had been increased. By that time the elevated tides had caused irreversible harm – barren mudflats and eroded creek banks. Adaptive management would not have prevented that ecological damage, which remains unmitigated today.
These images depict the Sesuit Creek marsh immediately upstream of Bridge Street in March 2023, 15 years after it was first exposed to increased daily saltwater inundation. The mud flats and creek erosion caused by the tidal restoration provide a forewarning that Mother Nature might similarly fail to restore salt-tolerant vegetation following tidal restoration in the Herring River.
In 2019, 11 years after completion of the Sesuit Creek tidal restoration, Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, wrote in an op-ed: "These bare areas in the restored marsh are not dead but simply unvegetated."
An October 20, 2009, newspaper article titled "Celebrating the Sesuit Creek Restoration Project" declared that "Sesuit Creek is the largest salt-marsh restoration ever completed in Massachusetts." The project was heralded as "an outstanding environmental victory achieved for the Cape Cod shore, a vital coastal ecosystem."
RG note: If you would like to see the aftermath of the Sesuit Creek project for yourself, here are simple directions. Plan your visit at low tide and park in the off-street parking area across from the Marshside Restaurant on Bridge Street north of Route 6A. Then walk about 100 yards north to Sesuit Creek and turn your attention to the left, where you will see the devastation caused by the tidal restoration, as depicted above.
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