James Holland and the editor of the Brunswick News.

James writes:

This is an editorial response to the Larry Hobbs article in the 7-30-16 issue of The Brunswick News (ARE LANIER’S MARSHES OF GLYNN IN DECLINE?)

The scientists mentioned in the article got it right about drought impacts on salt marshes. However, what was not evident in the article was, “HUMAN IMPACTS ON OUR MARSHES”. For instance, what were the impacts to our marshes and estuaries from the late 1960’s through 1985 when the silviculture industry ditched and drained many thousands of acres of wetlands to grow more pine trees?

During and following this the pulp mills sucked the upper floridan aquifer water supply to a point where it became an almost non existent resource for the up welling/springs of fresh water into our marshes. All the problems above had extremely devastating impacts to our marshes and estuaries, even today. Yes, droughts have huge negative impacts to our marshes and the above exacerbated these negative impacts and must not be forgotten in this narrative.

The draining of coastal freshwater wetlands that denied the trickle down effect from freshwater into our marshes was followed by development with the devastating impacts of storm water from development sites. For instance, large areas of development, where the storm water once entered our marshes via “sheet flow” across the earth, were disrupted by huge ditches that led to our marshes. All the rain water that used to enter our marshes that was normally spread out over large areas became channeled to these ditches bringing disastrous amounts of sediment and untreated pollution that normally would have been collected by the trees/underbrush and wetlands before it reached the marshes.

One perfect example is the development of the Sam’s Club area shopping center where Glynn County is forcing storm water from a large swath of acreage west of I-95 through one large culvert into the Altamaha to Brunswick Canal, without the benefit of any water quality treatment prior to discharge into the canal.

Glynn County and the Coastal Resources Division (CRD) have and are in many ways still intentionally harming the marsh. Is there a solution to this problem? Yes,one good solution is to properly enforce the Georgia Erosion and Sedimentation Act along with the Georgia Coastal Marshlands and Shore Protection Acts. In the end, what we do as humans will be the deciding factor about whether our marshes “will” or “will not” recover.

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