The best-engineered and cheapest way to control regular flooding
Wetlands, both inland and tidal, are the basis of life in any given watershed. According to the EPA, wetlands are essentially “biological supermarkets,” whose number and diversity of species rivals tropical rainforests and coral reefs. Wetlands make up less than 5% of the land in the lower 48 states, but more than half of endangered species rely on or can ONLY live in wetlands, specifically for feeding, breeding, hatching, and shelter.
Half of all bird species need wetlands to nest or feed in, including our own egrets, herons, osprey, hawks, ducks, gulls, and cormorants. Newly returning eagles and peregrine falcons, too. Tidal wetlands are essential nurseries to three-quarters of all of our commercially harvested fish and shellfish, and 90% of the recreational fish catch. Without clean and healthy inland wetlands, filtering the water as it flows from paved and farmed areas in the watershed into the Mystic River estuary, alewife, bluegill, carp, eels, bluefish, pogies, sea bass, blackfish, fluke, oysters, shrimp, clams, and crabs, could not survive. The EPA estimates that healthy wetlands generate 9 tons of human food per acre, making them the most productive ecosystems on earth.
Wetlands also directly protect people. They are home to mosquito-eating amphibians and dragonflies who must have the vernal pools at the edges of seasonal wetlands in order to live. We all can appreciate how equine encephalitis, west nile, and other mosquito-borne diseases affect our ability to enjoy outdoor activities.
Inland wetland soils and roots filter vast quantities of water, removing excess nutrients that could eat up the oxygen in rivers and oceans, as well as reducing pollutants from pavement and human activity nearby. This filtering function reduces the cost of operating water filtration plants by millions, so much so that many communities in the US (Boston, for one) and around the world are creating artificial wetlands to reduce their water filtration expenses.
Inland wetlands act as sponges, slowing down water and gradually soaking it up, even holding it for dry times. All of the vegetation in wetlands (wetlands are home to 31% percent of all plant species) participates in the great sponging up of floodwater. Some species, like a mature willow tree, can absorb 100 gallons per day. According to the EPA, one acre of wetland can store between one and 1.5 MILLION gallons of water per year. I repeat. Just one acre of wetland can store between one million and 1.5 million gallons of water per year.
According to FEMA, the annual cost of flooding in the US is over 32 billion per year. In 2021, businesses lost nearly 27 billion dollars, and the flooding in the state last year brought the meaning of these losses home. Businesses and homeowners in Mystic and Old Mystic are concerned about the everyday tidal flooding, made worse by longer and more intense rainstorms. The recent King Tides showed us what the mean high tide line will be by 2050. We don’t need to rely on computer models to see the impact of that. Tidal wetlands break up waves and slow down storm surges, but they also need room to move inland as the sea level rises.
Many people might think it’s silly to get all excited about a swamp. Yet, back in the 90s, the Army Corps of Engineers found that the Charles River watershed’s wetlands hydrological benefits saved Boston 17 million dollars per year in flood-related costs. In the Upper Mississippi region, after filling in or draining 20 million acres of wetlands for agriculture, the flood season of 1993 claimed 38 lives and cost billions of recovery money—much of which was directly attributed to the damage done to the wetlands.
We hear frequently about the tragic loss to human and biological well-being of deforestation, but we are losing wetlands at three times the rate. Since the 1700s, according to NOAA, nearly 90% of the world’s wetlands have been degraded. In the lower 48 states, 80,000 acres of wetland are lost every year. Each healthy wetland acre is busily taking up carbon that might otherwise contribute to global warming…when wetlands are drained and plowed into, the soils release an even more damaging gas into the atmosphere—methane. In the US, development and drainage is plowing into wetlands at a rate of a football field size every 9 minutes. Here in Mystic, we can see the results...Route 1 flooding next to areas that used to be tidal wetlands, Mystic Seaport flooding after filling in the parking lot. The water has to go somewhere.
Globally, according to the UNEP, wetlands ecological and hydrological services contribute $47.4 trillion annually to human health and security. This is why the Alliance for the Mystic River Watershed is grateful for opportunity to share why we love, celebrate, and protect our swamps and marshes, anything but unused or wasted land, and why we will stand with you, our residents and Inland Wetlands Commissions, as you seek to uphold environmentally, socially, and economically respectful development.
The legislative intent of the Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Act that created our commissions was that the commissions should protect BOTH the ecological benefits of wetlands to communities AND the hydrological benefits: Sec. 22a-36. Inland wetlands and watercourses. Legislative finding. "The inland wetlands and watercourses of the state of Connecticut are an indispensable and irreplaceable but fragile natural resource with which the citizens of the state have been endowed. The wetlands and watercourses are an interrelated web of nature essential to an adequate supply of surface and underground water; to hydrological stability and control of flooding and erosion...." But it was the early 70s. No one yet knew how significant a role wetlands would come to play in protecting communities from rising waters and intensifying storms. We need our State legislators to strengthen the law so as to strengthen the Commissions and towns' abilities to protect their communities.
There are three bills that could be opportunities to work for wetlands in the ongoing legislative session. You can find them here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HJh2UMrlDy8qRaVA1dtH0wsANxebdhmNMRpxQpJUJq8/edit?gid=0#gid=0
If you want to track and confer about all environmental bills affecting water, join in the conversation with Alicea Charamut of Rivers Alliance. Register here: Click here to register.
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