by Mary Reid Barrow

A walk and talk around the new wetlands area at Pleasure House Point on a beautiful breezy fall day was one of the activities offered at LRNow’s volunteer appreciation party at the Brock Environmental Center this weekend.

Other activities included kayak tours of LRNow’s Pleasure House Creek oyster reef and a crafts table, not to mention oysters on the half shell, music and more.

Volunteers gathered inside the Brock Center and out on the deck where sun glistened on Pleasure House Creek and waters of the restored wetlands to the right.

LRNow Director Karen Forget led two wetlands tours that morning and updated participants on how the old dredge spoils area has been returned to a pristine new wetland.

Almost 800 newly planted trees and more than 100 thousand new lush green upland and salt water tolerant shrubs and grasses were waving in the breeze. When new plants fail in these early days, they are replaced by Environmental Concern, the nursery who grew and oversaw the planting of the new wetlands area.

As we walked, Karen said she liked to “look beyond” distractions such as protective fences to keep Canada geese from dining on the new plants and and to prevent hikers from trampling on them.

It won’t be long before these safeguards are removed and all eight acres will be restored to the point where you can re-imagine the area as it once was about 50 years ago.

It’s hard to believe that in many of our lifetimes we didn’t think twice about building a berm to block off water and kill a natural habitat, such as this one once was at Pleasure House Point. And we did it in order to build a storage area for truckloads of contaminated dredge spoil, Karen noted.

“Here, thousands of cubic yards of spoil, removed mainly from the bottom of the Bay to deepen boating channels, were stored,” she said. “It was before we understood the value of our wetlands.”

It was before city governments and environmentalists had a full understanding of the role wetlands play in creating habitat for young sea life, from fish to our threatened diamondback terrapins, much less protecting our land and homes from sea level rise.

That day we were walking on the trail atop the berm that had been constructed 50 years ago to wall off Pleasure House Creek water from the dredge area.

We stopped on the brand new foot bridge that was built recently. Karen pointed out the wide channel under the bridge that allowed water to flow back and forth into the wetlands.

As we finished the walk, I was really struck by how tolerant of environmental abuse we were just 50 years ago and the harm we caused in the process.

“Now,” Karen said, “this is just beautiful.”

Welcome back, wetlands!

For more in depth information on the return of the Pleasure House Point wetlands, visit both the LRNow and the city of Virginia Beach websites.