A new plan to preserve Georgia’s marshes: Give them space to migrate
Decades ago, in order to build up a solid foundation for I-95 through southeast Georgia, construction crews dug some earth near the town of Midway, Georgia, about 50 miles south of Savannah, and left a deep pit. There’s now a public park in that spot, bounded by a tidal creek on one side and the leftover dredge pit on the other. Although the park is more than 15 miles from the ocean, high tide washes up the creek twice a day. Lush marsh grass fills the space between solid ground and the creek, but it’s a different scene along the other bank, where the salt water has steadily eaten away at the land while depositing sediment in the basin. Now, what was once a deep pit is a shallow mudflat with little islands of marsh grass cropping up in the …