Salt Marsh Restoration at Soundview Park

This fall, the Bronx's Soundview Park welcomed a $9 million restoration to its salt marsh.

Salt marshes are critical, natural filtration systems for our waterways. The marshes’ cordgrass improves water quality by absorbing fertilizers and trapping floating debris. Its complex roots bind to the banks, helping to reduce erosion. When sediments and particles of decaying matter slowly build up in the marsh, nutrient-rich mud called detritus forms.

This mud provides a rich habitat and food system for some the city’s wildlife, especially fiddler crabs and mussels, which contribute to the thriving existence of our salt marshes. Fiddlers burrowing in the marshes help to aerate the soil, while the excretion from mussels provides necessary nitrogen for the salt marsh.

The Soundview Park Salt Marsh Ecological Restoration Project restored approximately 3.5 acres of Soundview Park’s salt marsh and associated coastal shrub by excavating up to 12 feet of landfill and adding clean material, returning the area to appropriate salt marsh elevations.

This project also restored 13 acres of upland forest and meadow and improved an additional two acres of upland.

The goal of the restoration was to restore aquatic ecosystem resources and adjacent upland habitat in southern Soundview Park, a former landfill at the mouth of the Bronx River where it enters the East River. This has contributed to improved water quality by increasing the area of functional salt marsh that can remove nutrients from the water column, trap sediment, and provide habitat for wetland dependent fish and wildlife. More information about the salt marsh restoration project at Soundview Park 

Access the greenway nearby to admire the view and spot birds such as snowy egrets in the summer and canvasback ducks in the winter.

We hope that this salt marsh continues to be a thriving natural ecosystem for generations. To help this habitat grow, we ask that you please respect the fragile ecosystem and do not enter the salt marsh. More information about Soundview Park