Five years in the making, Peconic Estuary Program’s first living shoreline is coming to fruition as Greenport Elementary School students gathered Monday with representatives of community organizations to complete the project’s final planting phase. READ
The Peconic Estuary Program, one of 28 national estuary programs mandated by the 1972 Clean Water Act, will be seeking local input this summer on community areas that residents would like to see restored.
(more…)Federal funds have been allocated for a restoration project at Cedar Beach, Congressman Lee Zeldin announced last Friday.
According to a Habitat Restoration Plan prepared by the Peconic Estuary Program last year, the project will restore ecosystem features in a “degraded” marsh area that has faced erosion challenges. READ
Along coastlines around the globe, including here on the North Fork, climate change poses the threat of sea level rise. For decades, “shoreline hardening,” by adding manmade seawalls and bulkheads has been looked to as preventative measures for erosion and flooding during storms.
Now, experts say there’s a better way that could even reverse effects on the coastline and improve water quality. READ
Gazing out at the Peconic River, Joyce Novak can’t help but ponder its past.
Ms. Novak, newly appointed director of the Peconic Estuary Program, is especially interested in studying how the estuary has evolved. She already plans to go paleo — by examining fossils — to find some answers. READ
The Peconic Estuary Program will host a salt marsh workshop Saturday for volunteers who will help prepare plants for use in one of Long Island’s first living shoreline projects. READ
The Peconic Estuary Program is seeking the public’s input on its Comprehensive Conservation Management Plan, which hasn’t seen updates since it was approved in 2001.
The CCMP is the blueprint for how the program focuses its resources to protect and restore the estuary, which stretches east from the headwaters of the Peconic River and includes several bays, ending at Block Island Sound. — READ
What makes the North Fork unique is its farmland, salt creeks and Peconic Bay. They draw people here and keep them here. From the point where the Peconic River enters the bay in Riverhead all the way east to Gardiners Bay, this stunning body of salt water is magic. That anywhere on the East Coast there are still farms that run to saltwater, as there are on the North Fork, is testament to generations of people here who refused to sit idly by and watch it all disappear.
Kevin McDonald remembers 1985, when brown tide was first detected in Peconic Bay. He was recently married, and he and his wife had purchased snorkels and face masks to explore the bay, where the water color was a “light-colored coffee” and it was hard to see six inches in front of their faces.
Experts say native plants like these New England asters are preferred for rain gardens. (Credit: Katharine Schroeder, file)
A unique program that allowed for a small number of homeowners in Southold and Southampton towns to earn a rebate of up to $500 for installing rain gardens, rain barrels or other forms of “conservation landscaping” on their properties has been expanded. (more…)