South Bethany plants floating wetlands to improve water quality

If you're out in the canals in South Bethany, you may be seeing something new popping up. Floating wetlands are all across the five-mile stretch of canals. 

George Junkin, from the South Bethany's Canal Water Quality Committee says, "Because of all the development and very much built out now, we get a lot of rain water that washes in nutrients and makes it bad."

A few years back, the town jumped on board with the Delaware Center for the Inland Bays to fix their poor water quality and their latest vision is coming to life. Over 130 floating wetlands are scattered across the waterways. Many tucked away at the end of the canals. 

Science and Restoration Coordinator, Dr. Marianne Walch says, "Their primary purpose is to remove excessive nutrients from the water and they do that in several different ways. The plants and roots themselves actually take up nitrogen and phosphorus just like they would fertilizers to produce plant material."

These wetlands also give a new home to fish and wildlife. But in order to get their job done, they need to keep growing. These floating gardens need the summer months to flourish. 

"At the end of the season, the town will harvest those plants and remove them so all of the nitrogen phosphorus that is captured in those leaves will be removed from the canals and the water system," Dr. Walch says. 

More than anything, South Bethany hopes to get their waters back to the way they were once before. 

They will be collecting samples of plant material in the fall. From there, they're measuring how much nitrogen and phosphorus are in those wetlands and they hope to get a hard number on how much they've removed from the canals. 

They saw positive results down in Florida and they are hoping to get the same outcome in South Bethany.