Habitat Restoration & Protection Database

Degradation of the tidal marsh system at Old Field Creek began in 1917 when the wetlands were ditched for mosquito control. A pair of tide gates was also mounted to the twin 30-inch diameter culverts under Beach Street to prevent tidal waters from entering, and to allow the system to remain drained. Incidentally, these culverts were not installed properly - they were placed too high to fully drain the marsh at low tide. This newly created tidal restriction resulted in several problems. With the tide gates essentially preventing water from entering the system during the flood tide, there was very little head pressure from the water trickling out at low tide. The outlet of this system crossed a sandy beach and without the scour-power of the full volume of tidal water draining at low tide, sand would frequently build up in front of and plug the drainage channel. This led to residential flooding problems during times of heavy rain - the stormwater could not drain out of the system with the culverts plugged with sand. Even when the pipes were clear and water was flowing, the fact that the pipes were installed too high caused water to remain trapped in the system and led to more mosquito breeding. The invasive weed Phragmites australis (common reed) also was able to invade and out-compete the native tidal marsh grasses. The salty New Haven Harbor water could no longer enter the marsh, which converted the system to a very low salinity tidal marsh - creating ideal conditions for Phragmites to thrive. The tide gates leaked, allowing some tidal water to enter the system, but not enough to keep the marsh healthy, or to prevent the sand from building up at the outlet. To prevent the drifting beach sand from being deposited in front of the culverts, the City constructed a pair of training walls in the early 1960s to deflect the sand. Unfortunately, this led to a series of other problems. The training walls acted like any groin would in a sandy beach environment, and due to the direction of longshore drift, all of the sand was being deposited on the south side of the training walls. The walls deflected sand deposition away from Sandy Point, while at the same time converting Morse Beach to Morse Point. Morse Point has been steadily growing in size, while Sandy Point has been slowly eroding away ever since.