A long-awaited plan to reverse decades of environmental damage to one of the region’s largest marshes lying south of Alexandria could move forward under a $20 billion water-projects bill now before Congress.
National Park Service officials and local activists say they hope the project will undo the devastation to Dyke Marsh that began almost 70 years ago, when a company destroyed half of the wetlands by dredging the water for sand and gravel.
Since then, erosion and pollutants in runoff brought further harm to the area and its wildlife.
The marshland now encompasses about 300 acres between the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the Potomac River.
Tony Morris, vice president of the Friends of Dyke Marsh, said the full extent of damage to the site won’t be known until the federal government completes a broad environmental analysis.
Officials say it’s too early to know how much the restoration will cost.
“The [analysis] is going to tell us how dramatic of a problem we have, and from that we’ll be able to develop a program to correct it,” Morris said. “I think it’s safe to say we’re talking about a lot of money.”
That study would be made possible under a measure included in the water-projects spending bill now being considered by the Senate. The provision, included by Jim Moran, D-Va., would allow the Army Corps of Engineers to accept funds from the park service to restore the marsh.
In addition to restoring the wetlands on the 270 acres that Smoot Sand and Gravel Corp. dredged out over three decades since 1940, the project would halt the continuing shoreline erosion and improve a degraded habitat for locally rare birds, according to Dana Dierkes, spokeswoman for the George Washington Memorial Parkway, the park that includes Dyke Marsh.
The site is also a wildlife preserve.
A negotiated version of the legislation passed the House recently by a wide margin.
President Bush has threatened to veto the bill, however, unless legislators pare down local pet projects he says make it too expensive.
