Brad Rogers stands on a sinking fishing pier at the southern branch of the Patapsco River mouth. To his back is the MedStar Harbor Hospital in Cherry Hill. He faces south towards the Hanover Street wetlands at the very top of Brooklyn.
“There's been a huge amount of erosion, a huge amount of environmental degradation,” he says, pointing to the Hanover Street Bridge. “The road you see next to us, Hanover Street, is the only way to get north towards downtown from that part of Brooklyn and northern Anne Arundel County. And yet the water has been eroding so strongly that eventually the road itself is going to get undermined.”
Often that means flooding, which severs the lower-income communities in Brooklyn and Curtis Bay from the hospital.
That road could be protected by a wetland, explains Rogers, the executive director of South Baltimore Gateway Partnership — the lead nonprofit on the Middle Branch Resiliency Initiative. Once finished, the 11-mile shoreline restoration project seeks to protect vulnerable communities from flooding, clean the water and provide a refuge for both people and animals.
Before the restoration, waves would hit the hard vertical street surface, ripping away the land and causing erosion. Wetlands are like sponges, explained Rogers.
“If you have a nice, gentle slope that wave energy is dissipated. It's unlikely to cause the same amount of harm,” said Rogers.
The restoration is a massive undertaking that involves partnership and buy-in from local, all the way up through federal, branches of the government, alongside smaller nonprofits and even private developers.
Challenges are already underway. In April, the Trump Administration cancelled the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, grant program. The MBRI had hoped to get $31.9M from that program. Of that, $5.2M was already obligated.
““The BRIC program was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program. It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters,” said a FEMA spokesperson in a statement.
“We would be grateful if there was more federal support, but we aren't out of luck if there's no federal support,” said Rogers. Those BRIC funds were specifically slated for wetland redevelopment around the MedStar Harbor Hospital. Rogers explains that when funding snags rear their heads, South Baltimore Gateway Partnership is willing to go slower and piecemeal on the project rather than scrap it.
For instance, with the loss of BRIC funds imminent, the new plan to restore eight acres of wetlands near the hospital instead of twelve.
There’s money to be had from Maryland Department of the Environment, Baltimore County and Maryland’s Whole Watershed Fund, via the 2024 Whole Watersheds Act.
Middle Branch is one of the first five designated watersheds under that law, explained Natalie Snider, director of climate and watersheds programming at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
“The reason for the Whole Watershed Act is to look more holistically across a watershed about all the issues, instead of trying to piecemeal projects together to get better health, ecosystem and community health outcomes,” said Snider.
The hope is that overall Bay health can improve by going “all-in” on a few watersheds at a time.
Under the act, the watershed gets five years of state funding through the Whole Watershed Fund, but the act also requires partnership at multiple levels.
That basically allows projects to…“get every change out of the couch cushions that you can to continue to build projects when funding is scarce,” said Snider. “Then hopefully getting through this period and having more funding on the back end, we'll be able to do even bigger and better projects.”
Earlier this year, climate advocates sounded the alarm when the Maryland Department of Legislative Services recommended a four-year cut to environmental programs which would have essentially stalled the rollout of the law. Ultimately, the legislature did not adopt that recommendation.
Still, the Middle Branch wetlands are now sort of a test for this new law, one that the federal government is certainly challenging.
By late spring, the shadow of a new wetland emerges as trash has been cleared and soils are inserted into the water to make way for native plants.
Rogers has to be thrifty, he gestures to partially submerged blackened logs, which he says are repurposed after a fire at Baltimore’s tree recycling facility, Camp Small, last year.
“We're going to put them into the ground to add structure and carbon to this wetland where they can slowly decay. And that's actually perfect for what we need,” said Rogers.
“Now have tons and tons and tons of salvaged Baltimore street trees that are now being turned back into wetlands.”
It’s immediately obvious that despite the current construction and decades of environmental neglect, the area sees heavy-use.
Anglers drape fishing lines from the Hanover Bridge. Cyclists battle their way through the sometimes overgrown shoreline trail (also being restored as part of the project).
Speaking by phone, Navasha Daya of Youth Resiliency Institute recounts years of waterside programming with youth who have experienced gun violence.
“One of our young people revealed that one of the safest places he feels is when he's in Middle Branch Park. When we do programming there, he feels safe.”
Daya also organizes the waterfront Fourth of July festivals at Middle Branch which most years brings in thousands of people for fireworks and an outdoor concert.
Phase one, the Hanover Street wetlands, should be finished this summer.
As we finish our tour of the restoration site, seabirds trill overhead. Still a budding ornithologist, the bird flies away before Brad Rogers can nail down what it is. Since construction began on the wetlands a year ago, Rogers has watched hundreds of birds have stopped by the site.
“They were like the people crying out to be able to use this space to feed themselves, to feel safe, to live their lives. And now, even though the construction is not even done, they're here in droves.”
