Game of Floods - Wastewater Plant
Oyster Grower
Assignment: Read the role assignment and background reading below, then answer the questions at the end.
Role Assignment:
You are an oyster farmer with subtidal plots along the east side of the bay, and out in the sound. You sell oysters to many local residents, including Ollie’s Oyster Shack right on the beach, and you are active in the ‘eat local’ movement. Water quality is of course critically important to your operations – you can’t sell oysters from polluted water! You are concerned about the impact of a big storm on the wastewater
plant – a release of raw sewage from the plant would be a disaster for your business. You are a huge proponent of oysters and spread the word whenever you get the chance – in addition to being a healthy food, oyster reefs improve water quality, and protect land from storms. You’d love to see the town expand the area available for oyster cultivation.
Background Reading:
As Storms Get Bigger, Oyster Reefs Can Help Protect Shorelines
By Emily Matchar | Smithsonian Magazine | January 10, 2018
Municipalities and military bases are using the bivalve to defend against flooding and damage from climate change-driven storms.
Two hundred years ago, the streets of lower Manhattan were lined with “oyster cellars,” rough-and-ready establishments hawking all-you-can-eat oysters for six cents. In those days, the floor of New York Harbor was covered in oyster reefs, making the bivalve a cheap and plentiful snack for the underclass of the rapidly growing city.
An oyster reef in Texas (photo: The Nature Conservancy)
Flash forward to the early 21st century, and pollution and overharvesting have all but killed off New York oysters. Then, in 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit. The storm surge flooded lower Manhattan, submerging the streets once home to the oyster cellars, causing $65 billion in damage.
But if the waters surrounding Manhattan had still been thick with oysters, the damage might not have been so severe. If we bring oysters back, experts say, we could help protect our coastlines from future storms – storms likely to get worse because of climate change. These experts are calling for a rebuilding of oyster reefs around the country.
People – private property owners, businesses, the military – are listening to the call for oyster restoration.
“Oyster reefs protect shorelines from wave erosion naturally,” says Antonio Rodriguez, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
During a storm, underwater oyster reefs or beds – dense colonies of oysters both living and dead – act as a natural breakwater, absorbing wave energy before it hits the shore.
Research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst suggests that bringing oyster reefs back could indeed help reduce the costs of the next big storm. By using computer models and sediment samples from around New York Harbor, researchers were able to determine that wave energy in the area is now as much as 200% higher than it was before Europeans began harvesting the harbor’s oysters in the 1600s.
Artificial oyster reefs are already commonly used to reduce water pollution via the oysters’ natural filtering abilities.
They’re also often used to increase marine life, as many species, including commercially important fish, are dependent on oyster reefs at some point in their life cycle.
“Typical coastal infrastructure like a bulkhead [sea wall] protects the shoreline it’s meant to protect, but it doesn’t help the ecosystem,” says Bryan DeAngelis, a program coordinator at The Nature Conservancy, which is involved in a number of oyster reef restoration projects.
“Oyster reefs can provide those same protections but also provide huge ecological benefits like improving water quality through oyster filtration, reducing excess nitrogen, or providing critical habitat that supports the production of new fish and crabs. Furthermore, a natural solution like an oyster reef is less expensive to install and maintain – making them a win-win over time.”
Several recent projects are banking on that. Naval Weapons Station Earle, a Navy base on New Jersey’s Sandy Hook Bay, supplies warships with ammunition from its nearly 3-mile-long pier. It suffered $50 million in damage during Hurricane Sandy.
The station recently worked with an environmental group to plant a nearly mile-long oyster reef offshore from its pier. Eglin Air Force Base in Florida has a similar reef, as do naval stations in Virginia and South Carolina.
“Out here in Sandy Hook Bay, over the course of 100 years or so, most of the [reefs] in the waterways have either died out or been stripped away because of fishing,” says Bill Addison, public affairs officer at Naval Weapons Station Earle. “So we don’t have those natural protections in the water. Installing this reef really did provide an opportunity for us to have a natural structure to absorb wave energy.”
Local communities are investigating reef protection as well. In Louisiana, authorities are attempting to protect their flood-prone coastline, with plans to spend more than $72 million building 18 miles of reef. A number of communities in other parts of the country are attempting similar projects on scales both large and small.
Reefs can be created artificially by dumping a hard substrate, often old oyster shells or bits of rock or crushed concrete, on the sea floor and “seeding” them with oyster larvae. The larvae attach to the shells or rocks and begin to grow.
In December, New Jersey Representative Frank Pallone Jr. introduced the Living Shorelines Act, which would make coastal communities eligible for $100 million in federal grants to go towards shoreline protection measures including oyster reefs.
Oyster reef restoration projects have faced political opposition in the past. In New Jersey’s Raritan Bay, the environmental group NY/NJ Baykeeper was forced to pull a nearly 10-year-old reef over concerns that poachers might sell the oysters, which are not fit for human consumption because of water pollution, thereby introducing disease into the food chain.
“We need governmental support to streamline the permitting process,” says Rodriguez, the University of North Carolina professor. “It is easier to get permission to install a bulkhead or riprap than an intertidal oyster reef and that needs to change. Also, more public education and outreach is needed about the benefits of using oyster reefs to protect the shoreline from erosion.”
But environmentalists remain undeterred, with several high-profile projects in the works. In New York, the Billion Oyster Project aims to reintroduce a hundred acres of reef and a billion oysters to New York Harbor by 2035, hoping to reduce storm damage, clean up water, and provide habitats for marine life. They work with restaurants to source oyster shells for use as a substrate, and invite local schoolkids to act as citizen scientists by monitoring the oysters.
Billion Oyster Project volunteers hoist sacks of oyster shells to rebuild oyster reefs in New York harbor. Biologists hope these oysters will filter water, protect the city, and create a more diverse ecosystem.
Questions:
1. How do oysters protect communities from storms?
2. How do oysters improve water quality?
3. How do oyster reefs improve ecosystems?
4. Answer this question in character as an oyster grower (see the role description at the top). The wastewater treatment plant is threatened by storms and sea level rise. As an oyster grower, what is your primary concern if a storm hits the plant, and why?
Once you have answered the above questions, move on to Part 2 here.
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