With the Pensacola and Perdido Bays Estuary Program preparing to embark on an ambitious plan to work with private homeowners to fortify vulnerable Santa Rosa County shorelines, the county itself has stepped up to provide a location where important marsh grasses key to project success will be grown.
County commissioners voted at a Monday meeting to approve the nearly $91,000 expenditure of grant funds to cover the cost of building a greenhouse that will be used to grow marshland vegetation such as black needle rush and spartina spartinea (Gulf cordgrass) on the grounds of Bagdad Mill Site Park .
The plants are not sea grasses, but were described by PPBEP Executive Director Matt Posner as “emergent, out of water plant species.” They serve as important habitat in the areas where land and water meet and have traditionally played a role in dampening wave action, which lessens the need to use more substantial material, such as rocks or sea walls, as inshore buffers…