Watchdogs have their eyes on marsh

More houses, more people, more businesses, more jobs.

This is a surefire recipe for economic success to communities, individuals and families. And more of it - a lot more, in fact - is headed this way, the Coastal Georgia Regional Development Center in Brunswick is predicting.

That is all well and good, but there may be a price to pay if communities are not careful, Coastal Georgia's most vocal environmental organizations warn. There's the toll on the environment.

Glynn and other coastal counties where commercial fisheries once thrived are already caught in the damaging undertow of environmental change. James Holland, a former commercial crabber who now heads up the Altamaha Riverkeeper, an environmental watchdog group based in McIntosh County, says the consequences of failing to protect natural resources are already evident.

Commercial fisheries, hit hard by foreign competition, are finding it increasingly difficult to scrape up meaty enough harvests to sustain their traditional livelihoods. The culprit is the absence of significant rain, a situation compounded by other factors that are man-made, he said.

"Many of the lost or lessened species of fish, shrimp and crabs can be tied directly to high saline waters," Holland said. "This very salty water is most easily recognizable and now predictable when we are in even a minor drought."

That is because the coastal community's natural, fail-safe buffers against the devious impacts of drought are disappearing, he said.

"The swamps and wetlands that once allowed freshwater to trickle down into our estuaries are, for the most part, gone or highly disrupted by human activities," Holland said. "I can still remember when our coastal freshwater swamps held water, even in times of drought."

Marine life is not all that has suffered with the loss of wetlands.

"Gone are the bountiful numbers of wood ducks that used to almost darken out the sky at daylight on Paulk's Pasture (in Glynn County)," Holland said. "Gone are the fly ways where we at least had some large ducks like mallards in the winter time. Gone also are the major cypress swamps that held the fluid of life - water - for all manner of life, including human life.

"Today, these supposedly upland dry areas are being filled with large subdivisions and more ditches to drain off storm water."

That storm water - runoff from the land - often cleanses the land of man-made poisons and other contaminants that wind up in estuaries and rivers.

David Kyler, director of the Center for a Sustainable Coast on St. Simons Island, says failing to shield the environment from negative impacts of growth will have a huge monetary downside.

"This will hurt us economically, too, since more than $1 billion a year is derived from the natural environment - recreational fishing, nature-based tourism, and commercial fishing," he said. "Beyond that, lower water quality will be a deterrent to general economic growth and diversification."

The loss of marsh will make the community vulnerable to storm surges, he said.

The demise of marshes and other wetlands just opens the door to greater flooding - a lesson already learned in Savannah, the Glynn Environmental Coalition in Brunswick says.

"The stormwater must go somewhere, and often it is being pushed into areas with long-established homes and businesses," said Daniel Parshley, project manager for Glynn Environmental Coalition. "Realizing the magnitude of the problem has been delayed by our seven-year drought. When we do return to our typical annual rainfall and the groundwater returns to normal conditions, many homes will be unlivable.

"The question all citizens of Glynn County need to ask is, 'Will Glynn County have to buy back these homes?' In Savannah to our north, this is just what happened at great expense to taxpayers."

Environmental groups fear more wetlands will be lost in the future as more people flock to the coast.

The Georgia Sierra Club paints a more frightening picture. Its main concerns are wastewater disposal, unwise development in freshwater wetlands and increased stormwater volume due to additions to square footage of impervious surfaces, says Neill Herring, spokesperson for the Sierra Club of Georgia.

"Coastal creeks and estuaries are going to be converted into tidal, brackish sewers, people are going to live in decaying houses collapsing into swamps and flooding is going to become common all over the coast with each substantial rain," he said. "Salt marsh is going to be killed with inundations of fresh water."

There are steps the community and state can take to offset doomsday predictions, environmental groups say.

For instance, says Kyler of the Center for a Sustainable Coast, "(We can) adopt strict stormwater control requirements with stiff penalties for failure to enforce and failure to comply with them."

Other defensive steps proposed by Kyler include:

* Increase efforts to gather and analyze data on water quality, fisheries, and wetlands to guide state and local policies governing environmental protection and development.

* Require, as well as strictly enforce, natural buffers along all wetlands and waterways.

* Prohibit development of environmentally critical and sensitive areas.

The Altamaha Riverkeeper, warning of worse problems to come, recommends a more drastic measure.

"To the best of my knowledge there is precious little being done in the Brunswick-Golden Isles area that will offset or even slow down the chain of events coming our way environmentally," Holland said. "Glynn County has a storm water management plan in place at this time; however, I do not believe Glynn County has the intestinal fortitude to enforce this new storm water ordinance until it is too late.

"What we need in the Golden Isles is a short moratorium on development to assess where we are at when it comes to the health and safety of the human coastal population."

The Glynn Environmental Coalition says the county needs a vision for the future.

"Development in Glynn County is not guided by a vision for our community's future, but rather zoning and planning variances and extracting the maximum short-term profit," Parshley said. "Short-term is short-sighted.

"Glynn County desperately needs a vision for our future and to implement it."

Who are they:

Glynn Environmental Coalition is a nonprofit organization of 475 members based in Glynn County, dedicated to a clean environment and healthy economy. Call (912) 466-0934 or go to gec@glynnenvironmental.org

Altamaha Riverkeeper is a nonprofit, grassroots organization based in Darien, focused on protection of the Altamaha River and its tributaries. Call (912) 437-8164 or go to stewards@altamahariverkeeper.org

Center for a Sustainable Coast is a nonprofit group based on St. Simons Island focused on sustaining Coastal Georgia's natural, cultural, and economic resources. Call (912) 638-3612 or go to susdev@gate.net.

Sierra Club (Georgia chapter) is part of a national environmental group with a membership of 750,000. Call (404) 607-1262, ext. 221, or go to georgia.chapter@sierraclub.org.