Mad Horse Creek Wetland Restoration

The project will restore more than 260-acres of former agricultural lands and degraded tidal marsh in one of the largest remaining wilderness reserves in New Jersey.

Location

New Jersey, USA

Client

New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Project Status

Completed

The Mad Horse Creek Wildlife Management Area sits adjacent to the Delaware Bay in Salem County, New Jersey. An oil spill from a damaged tanker spread 115 miles into the Delaware River and tributaries, damaging shoreline habitat, marine life and bird populations. Additionally, past agricultural practices altered and filled the brackish marsh, resulting in a reed grass invasion of the wetland.

To correct these impacts, WSP is working with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to return the degraded tidal marsh to a mosaic of habitats for a wide variety of estuarine and terrestrial flora and fauna.

The project involves removing fill material to allow for tidal inundation, and creating, restoring and enhancing 104 acres of freshwater and tidal wetlands, including wet meadow and vernal pools. Additionally, approximately 90 acres of upland areas will be restored to coastal grassland or left as fallow fields.

WSP coordinated with NOAA, NJDEP and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to perform site investigations. We characterized existing ecological, hydrologic, sediment and geotechnical conditions to inform the design and determine appropriate design elevations for the tidal and freshwater wetlands. Due to the rich cultural resources at the project site, WSP surveyed over 100 miles of transects — collecting more than 2,000 artifacts — to support regulatory approval efforts and establish a project footprint that minimized and managed impacts to cultural resources.

In addition to site investigations, our team developed permit applications detailing the presence of Federal and state-listed wildlife and plant species, defined anticipated impacts, and articulated the ecological uplift resulting from the project. Through a collaborative process working with stakeholders, WSP integrated the results of the technical studies with input gained through the regulatory process to craft a conceptual design that will be advanced through final engineering document development.