Posted on August 31, 2021
The historic oyster fleet of Bivalve, located at the mouth of Cumberland County’s Maurice River, is one step closer to gaining better protection from the onslaught of rising water and eroding marshland.
Last year, a team led by the Highlands-based American Littoral Society was awarded $4.8 million in federal funds for the planning of a $12-million project that would see the construction of a rock revetment and breakwaters, along with oyster reefs, mussel beds, and other natural barriers, in areas around the mouth of the Maurice that have severely eroded in recent years.
That left team members on the hunt for another $7 million, which they were hoping to obtain through a state match. This month, they received word that they were halfway there: The state, tapping the recently passed budget, has earmarked $3.2 million in matching funds for the project. The allocation will allow for contract bidding and awarding, as well as the first phase of construction, to begin.
“That’s obviously a huge leap forward,” said Tim Dillingham, the Littoral Society’s executive director. “We have all the required state and federal permits in place, and now we have funding to allow us to get going.”
The project will address in three phases several endangered areas at the river’s mouth. The first priority is the critically eroded Basket Flats, a peninsula of salt marsh that extends from the mouth’s western shore and protects the oyster docks at Bivalve and Matts Landing from the waves and currents of the open bay. Since 1985, Basket Flats has been winnowed by over a quarter mile, virtually eliminating an entire reach — or bend — in the river.
The erasure of Basket Flats has also caused an increase in the amount and frequency of wave energy hitting Northwest Reach, on the opposite shore, resulting in a half-mile-wide swath of shallow, open water where there were once healthy tidal wetlands.
